Edge features can be used in the scene analysis and computer vision. In this paper, we present a hierarchical relaxation method for detecting edge features in images. The relaxation processes are performed on the pyramid, which is a hierarchical representation about the image. Using multiresolution information about the image, we can change the weighted coefficients by considering the processed results at high hierarchy as a measurement of the local edge features in the image, satisfactory detection can be obtained in the all parts of the image, and convergence speed of the relaxation processes can be improved greatly. This method has the advantage of detection of complete border of the objects in the image.

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Using a mathematical model proposed previously for schooling behavior of fish, a simulation study is performed to investigate why and how fish school changes the form. Lack of leadership in fish school and time variation of the school configuration are realized by setting some model parameters within a limited region.

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This paper describes a new type of radio wave spatial filtering to measure the absolute speed of vehicles. The electric field intensity of radio waves generated and propagated from a broadcasting station demonstrate stochastically periodic and non-Gaussian spatial patterns due to the multi-pass fading phenomenon. We detect the patterns and apply the spatial filtering technique to the patterns to measure the absolute speed. Here we investigated the optimal conditions of the filtering via the study on the stochastic property of the patterns. We developed the optimal filtering system. Experiment carried out by the filter on real roads by real automobile demonstrated the validity of the proposed radio wave spatial filtering.

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The near-infrared hygrometer for measuring perspiration is developed. Temperature-controlled PbS detector is used as the sensor of the near-infrared beam. Long terms experiments show that the resistance of PbS detector increases as ambient temperature rises and the negative errors in the near-infrared hygrometer appear. In order to compensate those errors, the correcting factor C(C=Q_s/Q_m, where Q_s is water vapor concentration (g/m³) calculated from the temperature of the saturator, Q_m is the measured value by the near-infrared hygrometer) is introduced. Also, the resistance factor D regarding the resistance of PbS detector (D=(1/R_L-1/R_D), where R_l, R_D are light and dark resistance of PbS detector) is defined.
To obtain the relation between the resistance factor D and the correcting factor C, it is proposed as a expedient method that the light source voltage is varied to change the resistance factor D. From the measured values of Q_s and Q_m by this method, the factor C is calculated for each values of D. The relation between D and C is formulated by the curve fitting method and used for compensation of the near-infrared hygrometer. The accuracy of the compensated near-infrared hygrometer better than 2% is obtained for long terms.

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The living body adapts itself to a changing environment by reacting in response to environmental stimulation. Methods of assessing body regulation include physiological and psychological measurements and evaluation of task-handling performance. The living body can be comprehensively evaluated from multiple viewpoints based on these indices, and the appropriate combination of methods can be selected according to the purpose. We report on our methods of evaluating the physiological activity of the daytime living body (α-attenuation test, ECG R-R fluctuation analysis, Heart rate, Rectal temperature), and discuss the applicability of the proposed methods. We also touch upon evaluation of performance and subjective feeling.
Results 1: With the aim of quantifying the physiological activity of the living body, the α-attenuation test for evaluation of alertness and ECG R-R interval analysis for evaluation of the activity of the autonomic nervous system were assessed. The potential for quantification of diurnal change in alertness by the use of the α-attenuation test was suggested. We also rated a performance test based on reaction time and target tracking error, and a subjective feeling measurement method using an analog scale on a computer display. The subjective feeling measurement method and the performance test were found applicable to the quantitative assessment of diurnal changes in physiological activity.
Results 2: Rectal temperature, heart rate, performance, and subjective feelings were measured at night for an awake subject. They were depressed early in the morning. Rectal temperature and heart rate showed positive correlation. Rectal temperature showed negative correlation with reaction time, tracking error, and subjective feelings. These results suggest that physiological, psychological, and behavioral states were depressed early in the morning according to the circadian rhythm, and that the performance capability and subjective feelings could be estimated by rectal temperature and heart rate.

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In order to reduce the flow profile effects on the electromagnetic flowmeters, this paper proposes an electromagnetic flowmeter with plural pairs of electrodes.
In case of a uniform magnetic field the optimum configuration for two pairs of electrodes has been determined to be the position 20deg. shifted from the conventional electrode axis. Numerical simulations for which the flow profile downstream of 90° bend has been applied, flow tests using the eccentric orifices have proved that two pair electrodes type is able to reduce the errors due to the non-axisymmetrical flow profile.
It has been also shown that the combined configuration of two pair electrodes and non-uniform magnetic field proved to make the required length downstream of bends and valves shorter than single pair electrodes.

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In a control of D. D. manipulator, a non-linear compensation and conventional state feedback provide a stable linear closed system. However, the stability does not assured under the presence of parametric uncertainties. In this paper H_∞ controller design method is used to obtain a robust stabilizing controller for a D. D. manipulator with parameter uncertainties.

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This paper considers a weighted H_∞ desigh for a full-order estimator whose state dimension is equal to that of the original plant. Based on an algebraic Riccati equation approach, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a full-order estimator satisfying the weighted H_∞ error bound, and develop a design algorithm of the estimator. We then give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a full-order estimator satisfying a weighted H₂/H_∞ error bound by using the Lagrange multiplier technique. The condition involves a system of an algebraic Riccati equation and a Lyapunov equation. An iterative method for solving the weighted H₂/H_∞ optimization problem is also developed. An example is included to show the applicability of the present design method.

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This paper describes a directional control method of a small tunneling robot using an optimal regulator. This robot constructs conduits of telecomunication cables. The directional control of a tunneling robot conventionally depends on both the experience and intuition of the operator, and there have been no studies with regard to its automation. Therefore, in order to establish automatic control technology for a small tunneling robot, we have already proposed a directional control method in while the head angle of the control input is the sum of the deviation multiplied by feedback gain Kp and the angular deviation multiplied by feedback gain Ka. However, this method must search the feedback gains Kp and Ka by trial and error. So, in this paper, we used an optimal regulator as a directional control method. The feedback gains of the optimal regulator can obtain by using Riccati equation automatically. First, the transfer function of the relationship between the head angle of the control input and the deviation, the angular deviation of the tunneling robot was obtained by linear approximation. Then, this transfer function was transferred to the state space representation. Next, the optimal controller was constructed by the optimal regulator and the observer. Simulation results showed that this controller performed good directional control under changing the initial position, angle of the robot and the design line. These results showed the validity of this control method using the optimal regulator.

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Knowledge acquisition is a critical stage in developing expert systems. ID3 is an approach to overcome it.
ID3 can create crisp IF-THEN rules automatically based on entropy of cases. However the number of rules increases when there are many cases even if they have slightly different values.
Fuzzy modeling technique is applied to many fields because it can represent fuzzy knowledge. In order to apply fuzzy modeling to the real world problems, identification of variables in premise part is essential. It is, however, difficult because it involves many numbers of variables in the real world.
Therefore this paper proposes a practical method to identify effective variables in a premise part of fuzzy IF-THEN rules. This method is that,
(1) Calculate priorities of variables and boundary values for fuzzy sets by information contents and identify effective variables in a premise part by the priorities and operators' experiences.
(2) Identify consequence part using multiple regression analysis in subspace determined by a premise part.
This method is applied to prediction of heater outlet temperature by crude names and their rates and/or feed rate and so on. And we have a good result, that is,
(1) We created practical fuzzy model to predict heater outlet temperature and
(2) It has shown that enough accuracy without adding new rules or without modifying rules for two and a half years.

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Using a technique of motion measurement basis on video images, limitation of subjects and constraint of its motion are reduced because of no surface markers. In this method, joint angles are estimated from geometric model-matching into a body image, however, it is necessary to extract the body image from a scene including natural background.
In the present paper, we propose a body recognition method using fuzzy reasoning basis on 4 kinds of image features: difference of intensities between an object image and its background image, difference of textures between them, momentary changes of intensities produced by body movements and approximate position and orientation of the geometric model for the model-matching method. These features were calculated on each divided rectangular segment of the image. Shortening the calculating time, we used a hierarchical process as follows. In the first step, the rectangular segments were divided roughly as the first hierarchy. The body segments were recognized globally in this low resolution hierarchy(H16×V16). Then, the segments were divided finer in the next hierarchy, and 8-neighbor segments of the body contours that were recognized in the previous hierarchy were re-recognized locally in this higher resolution hierarchy (H32×V32). Re-recognition of the neighbors on the body contours was continued until the hierarchy resolution was equal to the digital image resolution (H512×V256). Using the fuzzy reasoning method and the hierarchical process, the body image including little holes and little isolated segments could be extracted. It takes 7min per frame by a personal computer.

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In order to solve the reachability problem in Petri nets, reachability tree is one of useful method. To constructing the reachability tree, firing count vector will give available information. Firing count vector can be get as a solution of the equation to incidence matrix. In ordinary cases, an incidence matrix does not have full rank which is necessary condition to compute the inverse matrix for the solutions of the matrix equation. A method to make full rank matrix from an incidence matrix is to add some counter-places into the incidence matrix. But, in this method, cycle structures and/or parallel structures must be identified and total cycle numbers and parallel numbers must be counted up. Up to the present, there is no way how to count cycle and parallel numbers in a given Petri net. In this paper, we give a method to add counter-places by algebrical way without identifying the cycle structures and parallel structures in a Petri net. Let r be the rank of the column vectors of an m×n incidence matrix, we prove that the number which is the sum of cycles and parallels must be n-r. Further, we propose a method to identify the cycle structures and/or parallel structures by the solutions of the homogeneous system of transition invariant. We, also, prove that the counter-places added in the method presented in this paper, must be added one by one into the cycles and parallels, respectively.

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The performance of neural networks having a non-monotonous activation function is described. The possibility to improve two difficulties, convergence to local minima and slow learning speed, is examined. Simulations are performed for the exclusive-or and the binary addition problems. The network is also applied to the acoustic diagnosis for a compressor as a practical pattern recognition task. The obtained results show that the three-layered neural networks having the non-monotonous activation function are effective for the above problems and have the same generalization performance as the three-layered network having the sigmoidal activation function.

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An active electrode for surface electromyogram study has been developed. The electrode has an instrumentation amplifier, and has a good performance with respect to the stability of baseline caused by the lead wire movement and a measurement system simplification.

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This paper presents a design method for sampled-data I-PD control systems. It can give as desirable design as the partial model matching only by simple calculation.

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This note is concerned with the decoupling problem for descriptor systems. A new necessary and sufficient condition is derived. The condition proposed in this study is more simple and useful as compared with that given by Ailon. Moreover it is appliciable to derive a structural decoupling condition.

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The paper is mainly concerned with the problem of robust stability criteria for uncertain linear systems with time-delay. New bounds on the unstructured and structured perturbations are presented so that the systems remain stable. Since no state transformation is required to compute these bounds, it is rather easy to determine stability robustness bounds. In addition, these bounds are further relaxed and the results obtained in this paper are also applicable to the systems including delay perturbations.
Some analytical methods are employed to investigate these bounds. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate that our approach is less conservative.

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In this paper, H_∞ robust sub-optimal control problem for a plant described by a descriptor form is considered. A sufficient condition is given for the system with descriptor form to be H_∞ robust sub-optimal. The condition is derived based on the Riccati inequality. Using the condition H_∞ robust sub-optimal state feedback controller is given. The result is an extension of conventional H_∞ robust sub-optimal controller designed with state space model.

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