Toward a Holistic Delay Analysis of EtherCAT Synchronized Control Processes

This paper analyzes the end-to-end delay of EtherCAT-based control processes that use the events of message frames and global clock for synchronized operation. With the end-to-end delay defined as the time interval between the start of a process cycle and the actual input or output, we develop a holistic delay model for control processes in EtherCAT, by taking into account the time for in-controller processing, message delivery, and slave-local handling. Based on the measurements from a real EtherCAT control system, we discuss the average and deviation of the process delay as we vary the number of slaves and process cycle time. The experiment results show that the output delays are mainly increased by the average controller delay, whereas the input delays are more affected by the deviation rather than the average of the controller delay. Our in-depth analysis on the controller reveals that DMA time chiefly enlarges the controller delay for increasing number of slaves, while task release jitter is the main cause of the increased delay for longer cycle time. The presented delay model and evaluation results can be essentially used for the design of EtherCAT-based automation that requires highly synchronized operations, such as for coordinated motion and high-precision data sensing

Distinctive properties of biological neural networks and recent advances in bottom-up approaches toward a better biologically plausible neural network

Although it may appear infeasible and impractical, building artificial intelligence (AI) using a bottom-up approach based on the understanding of neuroscience is straightforward. The lack of a generalized governing principle for biological neural networks (BNNs) forces us to address this problem by converting piecemeal information on the diverse features of neurons, synapses, and neural circuits into AI. In this review, we described recent attempts to build a biologically plausible neural network by following neuroscientifically similar strategies of neural network optimization or by implanting the outcome of the optimization, such as the properties of single computational units and the characteristics of the network architecture. In addition, we proposed a formalism of the relationship between the set of objectives that neural networks attempt to achieve, and neural network classes categorized by how closely their architectural features resemble those of BNN. This formalism is expected to define the potential roles of top-down and bottom-up approaches for building a biologically plausible neural network and offer a map helping the navigation of the gap between neuroscience and AI engineering

URBAN DESIGN ANALYSIS OF NEW YORK CITY’S VIRTUAL MODEL - THE CASE OF TOM CLANCY’S THE DIVISION

People have started spending time with digital tools and virtual worlds to escape reality\u27s horrors. However, designed spaces are more than the players\u27 needs, especially those digital games that their stories involve urban environments. This inefficiency causes spending futile efforts both in time and cost for the digital games\u27 productions; The urban environments in these digital games are replicas of real-world cities. Some companies use some techniques for downgrading replicas. Therefore, this study aims to uncover the used techniques for designing Tom Clancy\u27s The Division (2016). By using reverse engineering methodology and qualitative comparative analysis, the in-game map compared with the real-world map. Based on the results, the used techniques allowed the designers to scale down the game environment to be 2.5 times smaller than the actual city. Rather, verisimilitude is achieved by combining sufficiently accurate elements to give the impression of complete accuracy. By implementing the results of this research, designers can develop smaller replicas to be perceived as more extensive

Formal Modeling and Verification of Motor Drive Software for Networked Motion Control Systems

Abstract: This paper presents a model-based approach to the design and verification of motor drive software for networked motion control systems. We develop a formal model for an Ethernetbased motion system, where, using timed automata, we describe the concurrent and synchronized behaviors of the components, i.e., motion controller, motor drives, and communication links. The drive, in particular, is modeled in enough detail to accurately reflect the software implementation used in a real drive. We use the design of multitasked drive software with fixed-priority preemptive scheduling. With UPPAAL model checking, we verify the precision and accuracy of the rendered motion in terms of the requirements on the actuation delay at each drive and the actuation deviation between different drives, respectively. The analysis results demonstrate the benefits of our model-based approach in the safety verification and design space exploration of motor drive software. We show that it is possible to verify deadlock freeness and real-time schedulability in an early design phase. And, for varying number of drives and size of messages, we can successfully determine the combination of task periods that leads to the best precision and accuracy

LEVERAGING LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL STORYTELLING FOR NEXT-GENERATION GAMING EXPERIENCES: A Holistic Approach to Virtual World Design

Designing a virtual environment within a digital game occupies a large part of the design procedure, requiring holistic attention and a broad arrangement of the game constituents. Considering other design disciplines, they occupy a unified design methodology; however, a comprehensive literature review reveals the lack of the intended design methodology in the digital game domain's virtual environment development, despite a currently proposed theoretical methodology trying to dissolve the issue. Hence, this research aims to determine the industry's requirements and provide a set of assets included in current digital games as an initial step of providing such a design methodology for the domain. In this regard, the researchers reverse-engineered ten selected digital games, understanding the current condition of digital games via adopting the mentioned currently available design methodology. This dataset reveals a lack in the assets of the story layer in the recent digital games, despite their focus on being story-based. This dilemma leads to long text or speech conversations between game characters, disrupting the players while following the game. The current design focuses on environmental resources only, however, as a virtual landscape, the story needs to be reinforced to be a balanced and well-designed game. Hence, increasing the ratio of the assets in this layer will advance the games' interactivity. Also, as future work, this data set could pave the way for a digital game industry design tool regarding the virtual environment

A new direction and business plan for the golf business in Korea : strategies to attract customers to the domestic market

Thesis: S.M. in Management Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2014.23Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 49-50).The golf industry in South Korea has been flourishing and has maintained high profitability. However, the South Korean market is not adequately prepared for the increasingly globalized world economy and resulting changes in the business environment. There is a need for research to guide the Korean golf industry based on long-term projections of the Korean economy and future market trends. An increasing number of golf customers are traveling abroad to enjoy high quality golf services at more affordable prices. Golf courses in China and Southeast Asia are actively attracting golf tourists by promoting their competitive pricing. The Korean golf industry must identify and promote its competitive advantages to survive in this increasingly competitive environment. The main purpose of this study is to identify various strategies to increase customer demand for Korean golf courses. This paper also illustrates the correlation between economic trends and the golf industry in South Korea. Moreover, a business plan based on the factors that determine the choice of golf clubs, the competitive advantages of South Korean golf clubs, and potential marketing strategies indicate future directions for the Korean golf industry.by Ikhwan Kim.S.M. in Management Studie

Guaranteeing Isochronous Control of Networked Motion Control Systems Using Phase Offset Adjustment

Guaranteeing isochronous transfer of control commands is an essential function for networked motion control systems. The adoption of real-time Ethernet (RTE) technologies may be profitable in guaranteeing deterministic transfer of control messages. However, unpredictable behavior of software in the motion controller often results in unexpectedly large deviation in control message transmission intervals, and thus leads to imprecise motion. This paper presents a simple and efficient heuristic to guarantee the end-to-end isochronous control with very small jitter. The key idea of our approach is to adjust the phase offset of control message transmission time in the motion controller by investigating the behavior of motion control task. In realizing the idea, we performed a pre-runtime analysis to determine a safe and reliable phase offset and applied the phase offset to the runtime code of motion controller by customizing an open-source based integrated development environment (IDE). We also constructed an EtherCAT-based motion control system testbed and performed extensive experiments on the testbed to verify the effectiveness of our approach. The experimental results show that our heuristic is highly effective even for low-end embedded controller implemented in open-source software components under various configurations of control period and the number of motor drives

AVILNet: A New Pliable Network with a Novel Metric for Small-Object Segmentation and Detection in Infrared Images

Infrared small-object segmentation (ISOS) has a persistent trade-off problem—that is, which came first, recall or precision? Constructing a fine balance between of them is, au fond, of vital importance to obtain the best performance in real applications, such as surveillance, tracking, and many fields related to infrared searching and tracking. F1-score may be a good evaluation metric for this problem. However, since the F1-score only depends upon a specific threshold value, it cannot reflect the user’s requirements according to the various application environment. Therefore, several metrics are commonly used together. Now we introduce F-area, a novel metric for a panoptic evaluation of average precision and F1-score. It can simultaneously consider the performance in terms of real application and the potential capability of a model. Furthermore, we propose a new network, called the Amorphous Variable Inter-located Network (AVILNet), which is of pliable structure based on GridNet, and it is also an ensemble network consisting of the main and its sub-network. Compared with the state-of-the-art ISOS methods, our model achieved an AP of 51.69%, F1-score of 63.03%, and F-area of 32.58% on the International Conference on Computer Vision 2019 ISOS Single dataset by using one generator. In addition, an AP of 53.6%, an F1-score of 60.99%, and F-area of 32.69% by using dual generators, with beating the existing best record (AP, 51.42%; F1-score, 57.04%; and F-area, 29.33%)

Combined Error Elimination for Three Dimensional Thermal Images Using Hybrid Digital Holography

This paper discusses a method for eliminating geometric optics errors that can occur when combining three-dimensional thermal images using hybrid digital holography. We obtained reconstructed digital holography using phase detection autofocus technique and arbitrary tilt plane correction