Development of system supervision and control software for a micromanipulation system

This paper presents the realization of a modular software architecture that is capable of handling the complex supervision structure of a multi degree of freedom open architecture and reconfigurable micro assembly workstation. This software architecture initially developed for a micro assembly workstation is later structured to form a framework and design guidelines for precise motion control and system supervision tasks explained subsequently through an application on a micro assembly workstation. The software is separated by design into two different layers, one for real-time and the other for non-realtime. These two layers are composed of functional modules that form the building blocks for the precise motion control and the system supervision of complex mechatronics systems

Three-dimensional scanning of specular and diffuse metallic surfaces using an infrared technique

For the past two decades, the need for three-dimensional (3-D) scanning of industrial objects has increased significantly and many experimental techniques and commercial solutions have been proposed. However, difficulties remain for the acquisition of optically non-cooperative surfaces, such as transparent or specular surfaces. To address highly reflective metallic surfaces, we propose the extension of a technique that was originally dedicated to glass objects. In contrast to conventional active triangulation techniques that measure the reflection of visible radiation, we measure the thermal emission of a surface, which is locally heated by a laser source. Considering the thermophysical properties of metals, we present a simulation model of heat exchanges that are induced by the process, helping to demonstrate its feasibility on specular metallic surfaces and predicting the settings of the system. With our experimental device, we have validated the theoretical modeling and computed some 3-D point clouds from specular surfaces of various geometries. Furthermore, a comparison of our results with those of a conventional system on specular and diffuse parts will highlight that the accuracy of the measurement no longer depends on the roughness of the surface

Scanning from heating: 3D shape estimation of transparent objects from local surface heating

Today, with quality becoming increasingly important, each product requires three-dimensional in-line quality control. On the other hand, the 3D reconstruction of transparent objects is a very difficult problem in computer vision due to transparency and specularity of the surface. This paper proposes a new method, called Scanning From Heating (SFH), to determine the surface shape of transparent objects using laser surface heating and thermal imaging. Furthermore, the application to transparent glass is discussed and results on different surface shapes are presented

Functional results of intertrochanteric femur fractures after successful osteosynthesis with proximal femoral nails

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the post-operative functional condition of patients who had intertrochanteric fractures and had successful fracture healing with proximal femoral nail (PFNA)

Activity Recognition with Volume Motion Templates and Histograms of 3D Gradients

International audienceWe propose a new method for activity recognition based on a view independent representation of human motion. Robust 3D volume motion templates (VMTs) are calculated from tracklets. View independence is achieved through a rotation with respect to a canonical orientation. From this volumes, features based on 3D gradients are extracted, projected to a codebook and pooled into a bags-of-words model classified with an SVM classifier. Experiments show that the method outperforms the original HoG3D method

Multi-view pose estimation with mixtures-of-parts and adaptive viewpoint selection

8 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Second revision to the paper, as submitted to IET Computer Vision on September 24th 2017We propose a new method for human pose estimation which leverages information from multiple views to impose a strong prior on articulated pose. The novelty of the method concerns the types of coherence modelled. Consistency is maximised over the different views through different terms modelling classical geometric information (coherence of the resulting poses) as well as appearance information which is modelled as latent variables in the global energy function. Moreover, adequacy of each view is assessed and their contributions are adjusted accordingly. Experiments on the HumanEva and UMPM datasets show that the proposed method significantly decreases the estimation error compared to single-view results

Multi-view pose estimation with mixtures-of-parts and adaptive viewpoint selection

8 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Second revision to the paper, as submitted to IET Computer Vision on September 24th 2017We propose a new method for human pose estimation which leverages information from multiple views to impose a strong prior on articulated pose. The novelty of the method concerns the types of coherence modelled. Consistency is maximised over the different views through different terms modelling classical geometric information (coherence of the resulting poses) as well as appearance information which is modelled as latent variables in the global energy function. Moreover, adequacy of each view is assessed and their contributions are adjusted accordingly. Experiments on the HumanEva and UMPM datasets show that the proposed method significantly decreases the estimation error compared to single-view results

3-D scanning of nonopaque objects by means of imaging emitted structured infrared patterns

Three-dimensional surface acquisition is a subject that has been studied to a large extent; a significant number of techniques for acquiring shapes have been proposed, and a wide range of commercial solutions is available. Nevertheless, today's systems still have difficulties when digitizing objects that are transparent or semitransparent in the visible range. In this paper, some of the issues of traditional scanning systems are addressed by considering the radiative properties of materials. As a result, an infrared laser light-based scanner is presented for successfully acquiring the shape of complex surfaces by analyzing heat patterns that are emitted by the object

The Effects of Corticosteroid Use on Prognosis of Patients with Nosocomial Meningitis in Neurosurgical Intensive Care Unit: A Retrospective Descriptive Study

Objective: Invasive procedures such as craniotomies, external ventricular drainage catheters, and penetrating head traumas increase the risk of nosocomial meningitis in neurosurgical intensive care unit patients. While some studies suggest that corticosteroids increase this risk, others argue no such effect present. The aim of this retrospective descriptive study was to reveal the effect of corticosteroid use in patients with nosocomial meningitis in the neurosurgical intensive care unit for five years on mortality, nosocomial infection, the number of surgical interventions and the duration of stay in intensive care unit