Path Coordination Planning and Control in Robotic Material Handling and Processing

This chapter presents a unified approach to coordination planning and control for robotic position and orientation trajectories in Cartesian space and its applications in robotic material handling and processing. The unified treatment of the end-effector positions and orientations is based on the robot pose ruled surface concept and used in trajectory interpolations. The focus of this chapter is on the determination and control of the instantaneous change laws of position and orientation, i.e., the generation and control of trajectories with good kinematics and dynamics performances along such trajectories. The coordination planning and control is implemented through controlling the motion laws of two end points of the orientation vector and calculating the coordinates of instantaneous corresponding points. The simulation and experiment in robotic surface profiling/finishing processes are presented to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach and demonstrate the capabilities of planning and control models. Keywords: Robot pose ruled surface, Unified approach, Trajectory planning and control, Off-line programming, Robotics polishin

Prevalence and trend of hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors in Chinese mainland: a systematic review and meta-analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Blood transfusion is one of the most common transmission pathways of hepatitis C virus (HCV). This paper aims to provide a comprehensive and reliable tabulation of available data on the epidemiological characteristics and risk factors for HCV infection among blood donors in Chinese mainland, so as to help make prevention strategies and guide further research.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A systematic review was constructed based on the computerized literature database. Infection rates and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated using the approximate normal distribution model. Odds ratios and 95% CI were calculated by fixed or random effects models. Data manipulation and statistical analyses were performed using STATA 10.0 and ArcGIS 9.3 was used for map construction.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two hundred and sixty-five studies met our inclusion criteria. The pooled prevalence of HCV infection among blood donors in Chinese mainland was 8.68% (95% CI: 8.01%-9.39%), and the epidemic was severer in North and Central China, especially in Henan and Hebei. While a significant lower rate was found in Yunnan. Notably, before 1998 the pooled prevalence of HCV infection was 12.87% (95%CI: 11.25%-14.56%) among blood donors, but decreased to 1.71% (95%CI: 1.43%-1.99%) after 1998. No significant difference was found in HCV infection rates between male and female blood donors, or among different blood type donors. The prevalence of HCV infection was found to increase with age. During 1994-1995, the prevalence rate reached the highest with a percentage of 15.78% (95%CI: 12.21%-19.75%), and showed a decreasing trend in the following years. A significant difference was found among groups with different blood donation types, Plasma donors had a relatively higher prevalence than whole blood donors of HCV infection (33.95% <it>vs </it>7.9%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The prevalence of HCV infection has rapidly decreased since 1998 and kept a low level in recent years, but some provinces showed relatively higher prevalence than the general population. It is urgent to make efficient measures to prevent HCV secondary transmission and control chronic progress, and the key to reduce the HCV incidence among blood donors is to encourage true voluntary blood donors, strictly implement blood donation law, and avoid cross-infection.</p

DETC2005-85582 A FEATURE-BASED APPROACH TO EMBEDDED SYSTEM HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE CO-DESIGN

ABSTRACT An embedded system is a hybrid of hardware and software that combines software flexibility and hardware real-time performance. The co-design of hardware and software is the most critical but difficult issue in embedded system design. In this paper, we propose a novel feature-based approach to the codesign of hardware (HW) and software (SW) in embedded systems. The approach first defines an extension to the NIST Core Product Model and then provides an object-oriented UML (Unified Modeling Language) representation for the embedded system feature model, including models of embedded system artifacts, components, features, and HW/SW configuration/assembly. The extended model provides a featurebased HW/SW component co-design framework allowing the designer to develop a virtual embedded system prototype through assembling virtual components. The resulting feature-based model serves as the basis for developing reusable and adaptable components/artifacts. The underlying SW and HW components are determined through feature configuration, and thus HW/SW co-design is implemented by using feature-component mapping and component generation, which may be associated with feature creation, configuration, analysis and reuse. A case study example is discussed to illustrate the embedded system model