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H.-M Gross,
Ch Schroeter, S Mueller,
M Volkhardt,
E Einhorn,
A Bley,
T Langner,
M Merten,
C Huijnen,
H Van Den,
Heuvel A Van Berlo
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents results of the development of a socially assistive home robot companion for older people suffering from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and living (alone) at home. This work was part of the European FP7 project "CompanionAble" (2008-2012) [1] which aimed at developing assistive technologies that can support these elderly and help them to remain in their familiar living environment for as long as possible. To overcome current market entry barriers, from the start we consistently adopted a user-and application-centered development process of the companion robot and focused on three main aspects: (i) the realization of a set of mandatory functionalities to support care recipients and caregivers, (ii) a strict design and usability driven realization to increase the acceptance of the robot by the different end-user groups (the elderly, their relatives, and caregivers), and (iii) the development and component selection considering production and operational costs. In continuation of the work presented in [2], this paper describes the final implementation of the companion robot and presents latest results of functional tests and early findings of user studies recently conducted in the smart house of the Dutch project partner Smart Homes in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2012); 10/2012
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ABSTRACT: Game based training has gained a lively interest within the industry. We present a interdisciplinary work on the application of computer game principles and techniques within an automation industry training scenario. A data flow based component architecture forms the technical foundation of our system and enables us to exploit the capabilities of available middleware components like game- or physics engines. An interactive simulation of a real automation plant is built by the combination of state-based and physical object behavior. A model of training scenarios founded on the didactical principles of game based training is built upon our implemented system.
Cyberworlds (CW), 2010 International Conference on; 11/2010
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ABSTRACT: Enterprise applications are presently built on a 20 year old data management infrastructure that was designed to meet a specific set of requirements for OLTP systems. In the meantime, enterprise applications have become more sophisticated, data set sizes have increased, requirements on the freshness of input data have been strengthened, and the time allotted for completing business processes has been reduced. To meet these challenges, enterprise applications have become increasingly complicated to make up for short-comings in the data management infrastructure. This paper outlines the characteristics of enterprise application with regards to the underlying data management layer. We also propose a database design perfectly fit to the demanded requirements of enterprise applications.
Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, 2009. IE&EM '09. 16th International Conference on; 11/2009
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ABSTRACT: The paper gives a comprehensive overview of our Shopping Guide project, which aims at the development of interactive mobile shopping companion robots for everyday use in challenging operating environments such as home improvement stores. It is spanning an arc from the expectations and requirements of store owners and customers, via the challenges of the shopping scenario and the operating environment, the implemented functionality of the shopping guide robots, up to the results of long-term field trials. The field trials started in April 2008 and still ongoing aim at studying whether and how a group of interactive mobile shopping guide robots can operate completely autonomously in such everyday environments and how they are accepted by uninstructed customers. In these field trials, where nine robotic shopping guides traveled together 2187 kilometers in three different home improvement stores in Germany, more than 8,600 customers were successfully guided to the locations of their products of choice. With the successful development of these shopping guide robots, a further important step towards assistive robotics for daily use has been done.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2009. IROS 2009. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 11/2009
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ABSTRACT: A high efficiency digital MMIC amplifier for mobile communication switch-mode concepts was designed by utilizing a 0.25 mum GaN HEMT technology with f<sub>tau</sub> of 32 GHz. A comparative investigation of two different driver concepts for a 1.2 mm GaN HEMT PA is shown. The MMICs were on-wafer evaluated for class-D and class-S operation. A drain efficiency of 70% for an output power of 4.4 W for a band pass delta-sigma (BPDS) class-S input signal at a bit rate of 3.6 Gbps equivalent to a 0.9 GHz fundamental was obtained. For the first time the operating mode up to 8 Gbps (2 GHz) is shown with an efficiency of 62%, demonstrating the prospect of future use of GaN HEMTs for switch mode amplifier concepts.
Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium, 2009. CISC 2009. Annual IEEE; 11/2009
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ABSTRACT: In this paper a novel transmission line topology partially filled with liquid crystal is investigated in terms of its usability as a high performance continuously tunable phase shifter. At first the special properties of liquid crystals are described briefly. Then theoretical results based on a developed simulation tool are discussed in order to explain the advantages of this waveguide structure compared to other techniques. Experimental results confirm the expected performance by showing an excellent Figure-of-Merit in the Ka-band region.
Microwave Conference, 2009. EuMC 2009. European; 11/2009
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ABSTRACT: Whereas the available resources and storage capabilities constitute the most important limitation for researchers in experiments to be performed, increasing availability of high-performance computing resources, provided by the Grid, has allowed many e-Science communities to proceed with new challenging experiments, especially involving expense and complex specialized measurement instrumentation and pervasive large-scale data acquisition platforms. Remote instrumentation, which means providing control of distributed scientific instruments by users from remote locations, is an important part of functionality that applications, developed in a number of e-Science domains (among others, environmental science, earthquake engineering, experimental science), are supposed to provide. The EC-funded Deployment of Remote Instrumentation Infrastructure (DORII) project aims to establish a new e-Infrastructure which allows the applications to provide remote instrumentation services in high-performance Grid computing environments. The paper presents basic aspects of the Remote Instrumentation Infrastructure deployment and further use with respect to requirements of specific application fields of e-Science.
Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications, 2009. IDAACS 2009. IEEE International Workshop on; 10/2009
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E. Tuominen,
P. Anbinderis,
T. Anbinderis,
R. Bates,
W. de Boer,
E. Borchi,
M. Bruzzi,
C. Buttar,
W. Chen,
V. Cindro, [......],
C. Parkes,
K. Piotrzkowski,
S. Pirollo,
P. Pusa,
J. Raisanen,
E. Tuovinen,
J. Vaitkus,
E. Verbitskaya,
S. Vayrynen,
M. Zavrtanik
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ABSTRACT: CERN RD39 Collaboration develops radiation-hard cryogenic silicon detectors. Recently, we have demonstrated improved radiation hardness in novel Current Injected Detectors (CID). For detector characterization, we have applied cryogenic Transient Current Technique (C-TCT). In beam tests, heavily irradiated CID detector showed capability for particle detection. Our results show that the CID detectors are operational at the temperature -50degC after the fluence of 1 times 10<sup>16</sup> 1 MeV neutron equivalent/cm<sup>2</sup>.
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 09/2009; · 1.45 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A tunable phase shifter using liquid crystal (LC) is presented. The device is fabricated in a fashion similar to LC displays which makes fabrication very simple compared, for example, to MEMS approaches. At the targeted operation frequency of 20 GHz the device offers a performance of above 60 differential phase shift per dB insertion loss and a minimum tuning speed of 340 ms.
Electronics Letters 07/2009; · 0.96 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents a model based system for a mobile robot to find an optimal pose for the observation of a person in indoor living environments. We define the observation pose as a combination of the camera position and view direction as well as further parameters like the aperture angle. The optimal placement of a camera is not trivial because of the high dynamic range of the scenes near windows or other bright light sources, which often results in poor image quality due to glare or hard shadows. The proposed method tries to minimize these negative effects by determining an optimal camera pose based on two major models: A spatial free space model and a representation of the lighting. In particular, a task-dependent optimization takes into account the intended purpose of the camera images, e.g. different inputs are needed for video communication with other people or for an image-processing based passive observation of the person's activities. To prove the validity of our approach, we present first experimental results comparing the chosen observation pose and resulting image with and without respect to lighting in different observation tasks.
Robotics and Automation, 2009. ICRA '09. IEEE International Conference on; 06/2009
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents the realisation and characterisation of an electronically reconfigurable reflectarray based on liquid crystals at 35 GHz, which is able to electronically steer the main beam continuously in between plusmn35deg. To extract the characteristics of each single tunable unit cell directly on the reflectarray, a specific near field measurement setup is used to enable spatial resolution of the reflected magnitudes and phases.
Antennas and Propagation, 2009. EuCAP 2009. 3rd European Conference on; 04/2009
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ABSTRACT: A new measurement method for characterization of liquid crystal reflectarrays (LC) is presented. The phase and amplitude characteristics are determined by near-field measurements close to the antenna surface, using high resolution probes, which have been developed to resolve individual patches on the reflectarray. Measurement results showed a phase angle range of 280deg of individual detected LC patches. The measurement setup and corresponding measurement results at 35 GHz are presented. The procedure used for measurement automation is also explained.
German Microwave Conference, 2009; 04/2009
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ABSTRACT: A tunable microstrip reflectarray with beam reconfiguration capability at 77 GHz is presented. Tunablility is achieved by using anisotropic liquid crystal as RF-substrate, tunable by a biasing voltage below 15V. The reflector has been characterized by utilizing a lens setup forming a Gaussian beam. The reflector properties has been extracted in terms of its reflected phase and magnitude: While it is possible to tune about 280. of phase, the associated losses are still quite high. Nevertheless, pattern measurements of the reflectarray showed distinct beam collimation towards different angles when appropriate DC control voltages are applied.
Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics and the Canadian Radio Science Meeting, 2009. ANTEM/URSI 2009. 13th International Symposium on; 03/2009
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ABSTRACT: This paper describes the characterization of Liquid Crystals (LCs) at W-Band using the standard WR-10 rectangular waveguide. The reflection parameter of a 10 mm long waveguide - terminated by a short-circuit - is measured. The LC is oriented with a homogeneous magnetostatic field strength of 400 A/mm, generated with an air-cooled coil. The extracted complex permittivity of the LC K15 from Merck KgaA (also known as 5CB) is presented, showing permittivities well below 3 with a dielectric anisotropy of Deltaepsiv<0.19 (equivalent to tau=Deltaepsiv/epsiv<sub>max</sub><8.5%) and dielectric losses less than tandelta<0.023, all at W-Band.
Microwave Conference, 2008. EuMC 2008. 38th European; 12/2008
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents a novel triple mode cavity perturbation method for the characterization of the permittivity and dielectric loss tensor of general biaxial anisotropic media. At first the basic theory of the cavity perturbation method is introduced. Then, an enhanced extraction procedure will be developed which leads to a set of equations for every resonator mode. Finally, a comparison of the extracted results of known material shows the validation of the developed procedure.
Microwave Conference, 2008. EuMC 2008. 38th European; 12/2008
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ABSTRACT: The paper describes progress achieved in our long-term research project ShopBot, which aims at the development of an intelligent and interactive mobile shopping assistant for everyday use in shopping centers or home improvement stores. It is focusing on recent progress concerning two important methodological aspects: (i) the on-line building of maps of the operation area by means of advanced Rao-Blackwellized SLAM approaches using both sonar-based gridmaps as well as vision-based graph maps as representations, and (ii) a probabilistic approach to multi-modal user detection and tracking during the guidance tour. Experimental results of both the map building characteristics and the person tracking behavior achieved in an ordinary home improvement store demonstrate the reliability of both approaches. Moreover, we present first very encouraging results of long-term field trials which have been executed with three robotic shopping assistants in another home improvement store in Bavaria since March 2008. In this field test, the robots could demonstrate their suitability for this challenging real-world application, as well as the necessary user acceptance.
Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2008. SMC 2008. IEEE International Conference on; 11/2008
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents the design setup of an 4times4 array, each element consists of two Vivaldi antennas connected by an overlapped antipodal finline phase shifter. Simulations of an infinite expanded array showed a good matching in the whole investigated frequency range and fairly low insertion losses of less than 7.7 dB at 35 GHz. The phase can be continuously tuned up to 465deg. Measurement results of the realized array will be presented in the full paper. The presented results depict the first investigations of electronically steerable arrays fed from the back, based on liquid crystals. The results are very promising, encouraging further research: Rising the number of element cells and adding orthogonal arranged Vivaldi antennas for dual polarized signals, [8]. The setup can easily scaled down to rise the frequency. It is aimed to process the structure on fused silica, which improves the mechanical strength as well as excellent microwave properties.
Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium, 2008. AP-S 2008. IEEE; 08/2008
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ABSTRACT: This paper present the numerical modeling of transmission lines taking into account the special material properties when liquid crystals (LC) are used as steerable anisotropic dielectrics. At first a short introduction of the properties of LC is given as well as the theoretical models used for the physical simulation of LCs in terms of molecular dynamics. Then, a full wave method to analyze the electrical behavior of LC filled waveguide structures is described. The combination of molecular dynamic and full wave simulation allows finally a systematic investigation of these structures.
Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium, 2008. AP-S 2008. IEEE; 08/2008
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ABSTRACT: Liquid crystals (LCs) are promising materials for passive tunable components at microwave frequencies and optics. With increasing interest in the THz frequency domain the quest on tunable THz components rises. For the systematic design of such tunable components like phase shifters or reflect arrays a detailed knowledge of the dielectric material properties at the intended frequency is needed. In this paper we show measurement results for the characterization of two commercial LCs (K15 and E7, both from Merck) at frequencies between 100 and 350 GHz performed with a free space CW THz system. An anisotropy of DeltanK15 = 0, 05 and DeltanE7 = 0, 08, respectively, could be determined in this frequency range.
Microwave Conference (GeMIC), 2008 German; 04/2008
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ABSTRACT: For socially interactive robots it is essential to be able to estimate the interest of people to interact with them. Based on this estimation the robot can adapt its dialog strategy to the different people's behaviors. Consequently, efficient and robust techniques for people detection and tracking are basic prerequisites when dealing with human-robot interaction (HRI) in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we introduce an imposed approach for integration of several sensor modalities and present a multimodal, probability-based people detection and tracking system and its application using the different sensory systems of our mobile interaction robot HOROS. For each of these sensory cues, separate and specific Gaussian distributed hypotheses are generated and further merged into a robot-centered map by means of a flexible probabilistic aggregation scheme based on covariance intersection (CI). The main advantages of this approach are the simple extensibility by integration of further sensory channels, even with different update frequencies, and the usability in real-world HRI tasks. Finally, promising experimental results achieved for people tracking in a real-world environment, and university building, are presented
Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2006. ROMAN 2006. The 15th IEEE International Symposium on; 10/2006
