Photonic crystals, periodic structure with a high refractive index contrast modulation, have recently become very interesting platform for the manipulation of light. The existence of a photonic bandgap, a frequency range in which the propagation of light is prevented in all directions, makes photonic crystal very useful in application where the spatial localization of light is required, for example waveguide, beam splitter, and cavity. However, the fabrication of 3 dimensional photonic crystals is still difficult process. A concept that has recently attracted a lot of attention is a planar photonic crystal based on a dielectric membrane, suspended in the air and perforated with two dimensional lattice of hole. The fabrication of Si master with pillar structure using hot embossing process is investigated for two dimensional, low-index-contrast photonic crystal waveguide. From our research we show that the multiple stamp copy process proved to be feasible and useful.

There is a strong demand for the contactless transportation device for a hard disk and silicon wafer without contaminating and damaging them. To fulfill this requirements, A transportation device for them has been proposed. But the device needs many of costly displacement sensors positioned along the transportation interval and possesses a very complicated controller and driving scheme. To overcome those kinds of drawback, in this paper, we present a very simple and cost-effective transportation device which only consists of a linear guide, very simple electrostatic suspension system and driving circuit of stepping motor. The principle of stable suspension by relay feedback control, derivation of lateral restoring force, the design of transportation system are described, followed by the experimental system. Experimental results show that a 3.5-inch hard disk has been transported with a speed of approximately 20㎜/s while being suspended stably at a gap of 0.25㎜.

This paper presents an ultra precision machining system using a high sensitive force sensing module to measure machining forces and penetration displacement in a tip-based nanopatterning. The force sensing module utilizes a leaf spring mechanism and a capacitive displacement sensor and it has been designed to provide a measuring range from 80 μN to 8 N. This force sensing module is mounted on a PZT driven in-feed motion stage with 1 ㎚ resolution. The sample can be moved by X-Y scanning motion stage with 5 ㎚ resolution. In nano indentation experiments and patterning experiments, the machining forces were controlled and monitored by the force sensing module. Then, the patterned samples were measured by AFM. Experimental results demonstrated that the developed system can be used as an effective device in nano indentation and nanopatterning operation.

This paper describes a robust control scheme for high-speed and long stroke scanning motion of high precision linear motor system consisting of linear motor, air bearing guide and position measurement sy stem using heterodyne interferometer. Nowadays, semiconductor process and inspection of wafer or LCD need high speed and long travel length for their high throughput and extremely small velocity fluctuations or tracking errors. In order to satisfy these conditions, linear motor system are widely used because they have large thrust force and do not need motion conversion mechanisms such as ball screw, rack & pinion or capstan with which the system are burdened. However linear motors have a problem called force ripple. Force ripple deteriorates the tracking performances and makes periodic position errors. So, force ripple must be compensated. To maximize the tracking performance of linear motor system, we propose the control scheme which is composed of a robust control method, Time Delay Controller (TDC) and a feedforward control method, Zero Phase Error Tracking Control (ZPETC) for accurate tracking a given trajectory and an adaptive force ripple compensation (AFC) algorithm for estimating and compensating force ripple. The adaptive ripple compensation is continuously refined on the basis of tracking error. Computer simulation results based on modeled parameters verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme for high-speed, long stroke and high precision scanning motion and show that the proposed control scheme can achieve a superior tracking performance in comparison to conventional TDC control.

This paper presents an efficient method of extracting line segments from the occupancy grids in a grid map. The grid map is composed of 2-D grids that have both the occupancy and orientation probabilities using sonar sensors. We evaluate the orientation information of every grid when the occupancy probability of the grid is updated from sonar range data. To find the shape of an object in the map from orientation information, the orientations are clustered into several groups according to their values. The line segments are, then, extracted from the clusters based on Hough transform. Finally, a feature-based map is built with these line segments. The proposed method is illustrated with the results produced by sets of experiments in an indoor environment.

It is known that natural awakening of us in the morning is due to stimulation of the reticular activation system through biological clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of hypothalamus by the morning sunlight. If we sleep at dark rooms without windows and so without morning sunlight, thus, it is not easy for us to get up refreshingly in the morning.
In this paper, we propose an automatic sunrise household lighting system that helps us for getting up cheerful1y in the morning even if we sleep in dark rooms without morning sunlight. The proposed lighting system is an embedded system that turns automatical1y on the electric lamp and makes it brighter and brighter coincidently with the actual sunrise. The proposed system is composed of a PIC microcontroller with flash memory, a real-time clock IC, a D/A converter, an amplifier, a dimmer unit, a light bulb, a display panel and a keyboard. The validity of the proposed intelligent lighting system is demonstrated via a prototype production and experimentation.

This paper is about the development of Automatic FPC(flexible printed circuit) punching instrument for the improvement of working condition and cost saving. FPC is used to detect the contact position of keyboard and button like a cellular phone. Depending on the quality of the printed ink and position of reference punching point to the FPC, the resistance and current are varied to the malfunctioning values. The size of reference punching point is 2㎜ and the above. Because the punching operation is done manually, The punching accuracy is varied with operator's condition. Recently, The punching accuracy has deteriorated severely to the 2mm punching reference hall so that assembly of the K/B has hardly done. To improve this manual punching operation to the FPC, automatic FPC punching system is introduced. Precise mechanical parts like a 5-step stepping motor and ball screw mechanism are designed and tested and low cost PC camera is used for the sake of cost down instead of using high quality vision systems for the factory automation. Test algorithms and programs showed good results to the designed automatic punching system and led to the increasement of productivity and huge cost down to law material like FPC by avoiding bad quality.

In microcellular injection molding, gas supply system is needed. But, that device is very expensive to attach to the injection molding machines. So, new method is needed and gas-pellets MCPs is one of the solutions. In gas-pellets MCPs, there will be strange characteristics. In this paper, some characteristics are described on the view point of saturation pressure and saturation time.

In this work, computer-aided process design is carried out to develop an optimal preform of a pressure vessel. Knowledge-based rules are employed to design the preform, and they are formulated using the handbooks of plasticity theories. In the FE-analysis, a commercial finite element code, ABAQUS was employed. Axisymmetric deep drawing of a hemisphere-bottomed cup has been analyzed for various combinations of die design parameters. The length of the land of die, the clearance between punch and die and the clearance between the blank holder and die are optimized to minimize the forming load. The results of the simulations are verified with the experiments which are scaled down to one tenth of the actual size.

The present work covers a new ray tracing scheme of an injection-molded plastic lens linked with finite element analysis for injection molding processes. The traditional ray tracing schemes have been based on the assumption that optical property of the lens is homogeneous throughout the entire volume. However, this assumption is quite unrealistic for injection-molded plastic lenses since material properties vary at every point due to injection molding effects. In order to consider non-homogeneous property of a lens, a modified ray tracing method is proposed in connection with finite element analysis of injection molding. Through the analysis of the injection molding process, the distribution of refractive indices can be obtained. This information is then utilized in the proposed ray tracing scheme based on finite element meshes so as to take into account variation of the refractive indices. The effect of mold temperature is also investigated through finite element analysis, and the relevant optical quality is evaluated through the proposed ray tracing simulation.

Transplanting accuracy of a rice transplanter mainly depends on the trajectory of the hoe for picking, conveying and transplanting of seedlings as well as the return motion. The trajectory can be decided and prescribed to be suitable in treating seedlings for a prevailing soil condition. For the purpose of the transplanting accuracy, the design of a transplanting mechanism would be carried out using a planetary-gear-train system instead of the four bar linkage system. In this study, a design method of transplanting mechanism is theoretically proposed by synthesizing a noncircular planetary-gear-train system for the tool (hoe) to trace a prescribed trajectory.
The method utilizes an optimization approach to decide the lengths of an arm and a tool, the inverse kinematics to figure out the configuration angles of the two links, the roll contact condition in transmitting motion between the gears, and a linearization approach to obtain the shapes of the gears. Based on the proposed method, the shapes of the gears and the lengths of the tools of the planetary-gear-train system are determined for three prescribed trajectories. A kinematical simulation with a commercialized package program is also carried out to confirm that the gear-train system synthesized with the proposed method is able to trace the prescribed trajectory.

This paper deals with the finite element model of the monitor for the simulation of directional free drop tests such as the backward and vertex free drop as well as the associated free-drop experiment. The model was made for an unconditional stable solution for the explicit integration algorithm. It was found through the comparison between simulation and experimental results that the general behaviors at the time of impact were observed to well correlate with each other in terms of acceleration, displacement, contact force and stress of monitor components.