Earticle

The measurement with a signal of time difference of arrival (TDoA) is a widely used technique in source localization. However, this method involves much nonlinear calculation. In this paper, we propose a method that needs less computation for UGV location tracking using extended Kalman filtering based on non linear TDoA measurements. To overcome the inaccurate results due to limited linear approximation, this paper suggests a position estimation algorithm based upon an adaptive fading Kalman filter. The adaptive fading factor enables the estimator to change the error covariance according to the real situation. Through the comparison with other analytical methods, simulation results show that the proposed localization method achieves an improved accuracy even with reduced computational efforts.

There is usually much reaction amongst employees when a new system is introduced in an organization. These changes are intended to improve performance but sometimes cause considerable controversy amongst the employees and management. This study examines the implementation of Lean Enterprise (LE) system and it attempts to analyze the reactions of employees at a manufacturing company (SMC.CO) in Cape Town, South Africa. Some of the questions that were asked in the research include the following: What benefits did employees perceive by the introduction of LE? How did employees respond to the implementation of the LE at SMC (in other words, did they welcome it or not)? A semi-structured questionnaire was utilized to determine the responses of employees with respect to the benefits of these innovative approaches of production with specific reference to LE. The finding of this study indicates that LE plays a significant role in a company.

Lots of researches and applications on the automated overhead cranes in shops have been done for some decades, but a few successful results are reported. A more reasonable control system fit to requirements of manufacturing industries is suggested in the study. The controller was designed in the continuous time domain by loop-shaping method. Sway of the rope is suppressed by anti-sway control method. The sway angle of the rope is measured by a sway angle sensor which is mechanically in contact with the rope. The real-time control law is comprised of the position and the anti-sway controller. Some algorithms required for coil yard operation as well as main control algorithms such as reference position generation, position control and anti-sway control have been designed and fully tested on a crane in the steel-making works. The designed crane control system showed satisfactory performance on position control accuracy and antisway of rope. The maximum positional error is 20mm and the maximum sway error is 0.07 degrees in the destination position.

The heterodyne laser interferometer has been widely used in linear displacement and precise measurement field. However the periodic nonlinearity that arises from incomplete laser sources and non-ideal optical components restricts the precise measurement at the nanometer level. In this paper, the total least squares (TLS) algorithm which can obtain optimal compensation parameters of nonlinearity is introduced. Using the TLS algorithm, the nonlinearity error is reduced and the measurement data can be more stabilized. The effectiveness of TLS approach is verified through the comparison of the experimental results with those obtained by a capacitance displacement sensor.

The auto-braking system was designed by VHDL and fabricated to keep a distance between two cars. It provides pre-crash safety system for intelligent car. This module can detect the distance between front vehicle and driver’s vehicle to keep a constant distance using a sensor and operate the brake system forcibly if the driver does not decrease the speed of car. The system displays the distance between the two vehicles and the speed of your vehicle. The performance of the system was good.

We introduced the motion capture system using two CCD cameras recently, but could not show any better accuracy than a system using PSD camera. In this paper, we propose two kinds of method to improve the accuracy of the 3D acquisition of the motion capture system using CCD cameras. The applied methods are a distortion removal and z-axis adjustment. We show the result how much the accuracy on the 3D acquisition system improved through comparing with the previous system

The design of intelligent agents by means of reinforcement learning is studied in this paper. A relational reinforcement learning algorithm is used to achieve a compact knowledge representation. Moreover, this approach allows to improve the learning performance by augmenting the algorithm with the so-called background knowledge. A case study on simulated physical robotic agents is performed and compared with our previous evolutionary robotics experiments in order to justify our approach.