Farming is a typical task that includes repetitive tasks, incomplete working positions, and weight work, along with exposure to a number of musculoskeletal diseases and harmful factors. Therefore, in this study, work clothes were developed for older agricultural workers exposed to musculoskeletal diseases and alienated from the medical system. Work clothes can help in repetitive cropping and support the load on the work, preventing and mitigating farmers" diseases. To verify the effectiveness of the developed clothing, six men in their 20s were evaluated for muscle usage before and after wearing the clothing in two ways: stoop lifting and squat lifting. The results of this study showed that the mass of most muscles, except the gastrocnemius muscle, was reduced during lifting operations by stoop lifting after wearing work clothes. The reason why the gastrocnemius was more activated was that the ankle joint was greatly activated by dorsal flexion. For squatting and lifting, most of the muscle usage was reduced. In future research, we want to analyze the muscle characteristics of actual agricultural workers on wearing work clothes.

In this paper, we assessed muscular activities of lower limbs and foot pressure for car and bus drivers according to operating three electronic pedals that we developed. To analyze drivers’ physical exhaustion, muscular fatigue of lower limbs was evaluated. Eleven car drivers and six urban bus drivers were participated in this experiment. The virtual driving system was used for the real driving environment. The virtual driving system was comprised of a spring seat, a steering wheel, pedals (clutch, excel and brake pedals), a manual transmission and a virtual driving simulation. For the real vibration like situation on the road, six degree of freedom motion base system was used. Measured muscles were rectus femoris (RF), biceps femoris (BF), tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius (Gn) muscles. For the quantitative muscular activities, integrated electromyography (IEMG) was analyzed. Muscular fatigues also were analyzed through the analysis of the median frequency. In addition, foot pressures were analyzed and compared through the peak and averaged pressure during the operating three developed electronic pedals. The experiments are conducted with total 17 drivers, 11 general public and 6 drivers. As a result of the analysis, electromyogram and fatigue analysis through intermediate frequency reduction for pedal-1 more efficient than other pedals. And foot pressure also was decreased. Consequently, we suggested the most efficient pedal and method to minimize the amount of cumulative fatigue.

Ankle-foot orthosis with an artificial pneumatic muscle which is intended for the assistance of plantarfelxion torque was developed. In this study, power pattern of the device in the various pneumatics and the effectiveness of the system were investigated. The pneumatic power was provided by ankle-foot orthosis controlled by user’s physiological signal, that is, muscular stiffness in soleus muscle. This pneumatic power can assist plantarflexion torque of ankle joint. The subjects performed maximal voluntary isokinetic plantarflexion motion on a biodexdynamometer in different pneumatics, and they completed three conditions: 1) without wearing the orthosis, 2) wearing the orthosis with artificial muscles turned off, 3) wearing the orthosis activated under muscular stiffness control. Through these experiments, we confirmed the effectiveness of the orthosis and muscular stiffness control using the analyzing isokinetic plantarflexion torque. The experimental results showed that isokinetic torques of plantarflexion motion of the ankle joints gradually increased in incremental pneumatic. The effectiveness of the orthosis was -7.26% and the effectiveness of the muscular stiffness control was 17.83% in normalized isokinetic plantarflexion torque. Subjects generated the less isokinetic torques of the ankle joints in wearing the orthosis with artificial muscles turned off, but isokinetic torques were appropriately reinforced in condition of wearing the orthosis activated under muscular stiffness control(17.83%) compared to wearing the orthosis(-7.26%). Therefore, we respect that developed powered orthosis is applied in the elderly that has weak muscular power as the rehabilitation equipment.

In this paper, we present the development of a new training system for equilibrium sense and postural control. This system consists of an unstable platform, a force plate, a computer, and training programs. The unstable platform provides 360 degrees of movement allowing for training in all directions. To evaluate the effects of the training system, weperformedvariousexperimentstotraintheabilityofequilibrium sense and postural control of fifteen young healthy subjects. We measured the time a subject maintains his or hercenterofpressure on atarget, the time a subject moves his or her center of pressure to a target, and the mean absolute deviation of thetracebefore and after the training. We analyzed these parameters obtained before and after the training using paried-sample T-test. The result shows that the subjects experienced distinctive enhancement in their ability of postural control through the training using oursystem.

In situations of spatio-temporal perception about visuo-auditory stimulus, researches propose optimal integration hypothesis that perceptual process is optimized to the interaction of the senses for the precision of perception. So, when the visual information considered generally dominant over any other sense is ambiguous, the information of the other sense like auditory stimulus influences the perceptual process in interaction with visual information. Thus, we performed two different experiments to certain the conditions of the interacting senses and influence of the condition. We consider the interaction of the vi suo-auditory stimulation in the free space, the color of visual stimulus and sex difference of testee with normal people. In first experiment, 12 participants were asked to judge the change in the frequency of audio-visual stimulation using a visual flicker and auditory flutter stimulation in the free space. When auditory temporal cues were presented, the change in the frequency of the visual stimulation was associated with a perceived change in the frequency of the auditory stimulation as the results of the previous studies using headphone. In second experiment, 30 male and 30 female were asked to judge the change in the frequency of audio-visual stimulation using a color of visual flicker and auditory flutter stimulation. In the color condition using red and green. Both male and female testees showed same perceptual tendency. male and female testees showed same perceptual tendency however, in case of female, the standard deviation is larger than that of male. This results implies that audio-visual asymmetry effects are influenced by the cues of visual and auditory information, such as the orientation between auditory and visual stimulus, the color of visual stimulus.

This paper presents the temperature control in aluminum plate with Peltier module. From the experimental work, Peltier module is used to control the temperature of small aluminum plate for both heating and cooling with the control of current and fan ON/OFF. And current control of Peltier module was accomplished by PWM method. As a result of experiments, it is proper that operate cooling fan only while cooling duration and there exist a proper cooling current to drop temperature rapidly. It takes about 125sec to control temperature of aluminium plate between 30℃ and 70℃ and about 70sec between 40℃ and 60℃, in ambient temperature 28℃ -29℃ while cooling fan is operated only cooling duration. With the cooling current, temperature control of aluminum plate was accomplished more rapidly in comparison without cooling current. Future aim is to realize more rapid temperature control and develop SMHA(special metal hydride actuator) by using Peltier module as a heating and cooling source.

A non-destructive time domain approach to examine structural damage using parameterized partial differential equations and Galerkin approximation techniques is presented. The time domain analysis for damage detection is independent of modal parameters and analytical models unlike frequency domain methods which generally rely on analytical models. The time history of the vibration response of the structure was used to identify the presence of damage. Damage in a structure causes changes in the physical coefficients of mass density, elastic modulus and damping coefficients. This is a part of our ongoing effort on the general problem of modeling and parameter estimation for internal damping mechanisms in a composite beam. Namely, in detecting damage through time-domain or frequency-domain data from smart sensors, the common damages are changed in modal properties such as natural frequencies, mode shapes, and mode shape curvature. This paper examines the use of beam-like structures with piezoceramic sensors and actuators to perform identification of those physical parameters, and detect the damage. Experimental results are presented from tests on cantilevered composite beams damaged at different locations and different dimensions. It is demonstrated that the method can sense the presence of damage and obtain the position of a damage.

This paper presents the remote measurement of the ECU signals adopted with KWP 2000 protocol using the wireless communication technique of bluetooth. The bluetooth technology will be the most promising network paradigm which can open the new area in the information technology. Especially, bluetooth module is able to link all the electrical products and personal computers to cellular phone or PDA. This research has a try to design a wireless measurement model of ECU signal based on the car telemetry system using bluetooth device. In order to measure the ECU signals, we designed the interface circuits which is able to communicate between the ECU system and the terminal circuits according to the ISO, SAE regulation of communication protocol standard. A microprocessor S3C3410X is used for the system control and communication of ECU signals. The embedded system software is programmed to measure the ECU signals using the ARM compiler and ANCI C based on Micro/OS-II kernel to communicate between two bluetooth modules using bluetooth stack. The remote measurement of ECU signals using the bluetooth was designed and implemented to evaluate the performance of wireless network to the transmit measurement data. The possibility for the remote measurement of the self diagnosis signals of ECU adopted with KWP2000 protocol verified through the developed systems and algorithms in embedded system.

This paper presents the development of a keypad test system for the improvement of working environment and productivity using PICI6F877 microprocessor. In order to detect the fault of keypad products, hardware and software design is performed in this system. Keypad fault detection system is controlled by the 8 bit one chip PIC microcontroller for the exactness and speed. Developed panel of the keypad test system is comprised of the sub-panel for selecting in the inspected keypad types and the main panel for displaying the working order and fault position. Furthermore, all data from keypad inspection are stored in main memory of personal computer for the database. All these functions lead to the improvement of working speed and environment.

This paper presents the study on damage diagnosis of an intelligent cantilevered beams using PZT actuator and PVDF sensor. This study provides the theoretical and experimental verification to examine structural damage. Time domain analysis for the non-destructive detection of damage is presented by parameterized partial differential equations and Galerkin approximation techniques. The time histories of the vibration response of structure were used to identify the presence of damage. Furthermore, this systematic approach permits one to use the piezomaterials to both excite and sense the vibration of structures. We also carried out the experimental verification about reliability of theoretical methods for detecting the damage of a composite beam with PZT actuator and PVDF sensor. Experimental results are presented from tests on cantilevered composite beams which is damaged at different location and different dimensions. The results were compared with the simulation results. Good agreement between the results was found for the time shifts and amplitude difference in transients response of the cantilevered beam.