Infrared Ray Sensors Research Articles

MUS3E: A Mobility Ubiquitous Sensor Edge Environment for the Elderly

With the ageing of society, the number of households with older individuals or couples living alone is increasing. An “ageing-in-place” approach allows older adults to continue to live at home and receive help only when needed. However, this approach is insufficient for emergencies, such as falls, as well as for individuals with gradually deteriorating health conditions, such as frailty. Unexpected accidents significantly reduce the quality of life (QoL) of older adults. This paper proposes a new framework, the mobility ubiquitous sensor edge environment (MUS3E), to digitally transform ordinary houses to detect the movement of older individuals throughout their home environment and to notify family members and care providers of residents’ health status and safety information. The framework can be easily and inexpensively installed in any home, transforming an ordinary house into a smart home with an automated function for monitoring older residents. It uses ambient sensors such as passive infrared ray sensors to automatically measure health conditions by measuring factors such as walking speed. Residents need not interact with or control the system and can go about their daily lives. Since the sensors used in this system are mass-produced consumer products, they are inexpensive and easily replaceable, as there are many alternatives. In this study, we were able to demonstrate the practically and feasibility of this framework using a prototype that uses open architecture Internet of Things (IoT) software (Debian GNU/Linux 11, Arduino 1.8.19, ESP8266 2.7.4, ESP32 1.0.6, PubSubClient 2.8.0, ESPPerfectTime 0.3.0, mosquitto 2.0.11) components to digitally transform the living environment of older individuals.

A smart home system with security and electrical appliances

As the need for the daily household appliances and home security increases, the application of interaction technologies and electrical appliances used in smart home system has been widely developed. Considering home security, life convenience, and construction cost, a smart home system conjugated with single-chip controlling unit is presented in the paper. The functions of an intelligent home design include daily tasks (cooking, a morning wake-up call) and security mission when residents are not at home. Here, infrared ray sensors used to detect the intruding event are installed onto the entrances (i.e. windows and door). In addition, an IPCAM’s motion detecting function is also adopted for intruding event detecting. Considering the entrance convenience (without key) and safe (key losing) when coming home, a vocal identification system in conjunction with keyboard inputting device (an auxiliary device for the vocal identification system) system is adopted in the second generation of smart home system. In order to facilitate the manipulation of the smart home system, an android-based cell phone connected to the microcontroller is also established. And, to assure the home safety, the second lock (lock #2) will be triggered by the user via the cell phone if the intruding event is confirmed. The user can open the optional window to recheck the reality. Moreover, a ventilation system linked to thermal detectors can be automatically triggered via internet. Consequently, “family activity” can be pretended by the audio broadcast system while the house is vacant.

Track Section Occupancy Detection Model Based on Infrared Ray Sensor and Time-Series Change Rate Matching

Track section occupancy detection is one of the key problems in the field of railway transportation and train dispatching, which has strong link with the safety of railway traffic. In order to reduce the cost and improve the accuracy of track section occupancy detection, this paper presents an algorithm based on infrared ray sensors and the time-series change rate matching. Once a train passes, the infrared ray sensors installed on both sides of the track collect the signal time-series of a wheel set where various noises exist. This paper makes use of the similarity between the change speed and the acceleration of the standard time-series and the time-series collected to realize the similarity matching and noise recognition, which can infer the direction of the running train and the number of its wheel sets by analyzing and judging the signal time-series and finally achieve the task of track section occupancy detection. The simulation data and field test results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm improves the accuracy, availability, and reliability of track section occupancy detection based on infrared ray sensors, with a correct rate up to 99.999%.

High-Velocity Impact Damage Behavior of Carbon/Epoxy Composite Laminates

In this paper, the impact damage behavior of USN-150B carbon/epoxy composite laminates subjected to high velocity impact was studied experimentally and numerically. Square composite laminates stacked with [45/0/-45/90]ns quasi-symmetric and [0/90]ns cross-ply stacking sequences and a conical shape projectile with steel core, copper skin and lead filler were considered. First high-velocity impact tests were conducted under various test conditions. Three tests were repeated under the same impact condition. Projectile velocity before and after penetration were measured by infrared ray sensors and magnetic sensors. High-speed camera shots and C-Scan images were also taken to measure the projectile velocities and to obtain the information on the damage shapes of the projectile and the laminate specimens. Next, the numerical simulation was performed using explicit finite element code LS-DYNA. Both the projectile and the composite laminate were modeled using three-dimensional solid elements. Residual velocity history of the impact projectile and the failure shape and extents of the laminates were predicted and systematically examined. The results of this study can provide the understanding on the penetration process of laminated composites during ballistic impact, as well as the damage amount and modes. These were thought to be utilized to predict the decrease of mechanical properties and also to help mitigate impact damage of composite structures.

Computer Aided Design of Auto-Location Head-Controlled Talking Machine for Visually Impaired People with Multiple Disabilities

In this paper, the auto-location head-controlled talking machine has been carried out using computer aided design to solve the problem of communication with the outside world for the visually impaired people with multiple disabilities. The talking machine makes use of the infrared ray sensors to receive the signals launched by shaking the infrared ray emitter on their heads. The communication functions of Pinyin, associating Chinese character, debugging error are processed based on the single chip processor 89C52. Then the signals are transmitted into a personal computer through the RS-232 or USB interface. The pronounced software of head-controlled talking machine is created using text-to-speech system to achieve the communication with other people. This study also develops auto-location function by the CCD tracing module to adjust the infrared ray sensor and increase the accuracy of the head-controlled talking machine. The results of this study can improve the ability of communication for visually impaired people with multiple disabilities.

상대거리 지문 정보를 이용한 무인이송차량의 주행 경로 제어

In this paper, a method of moving path control of an automatic guided vehicle in an indoor environment through recognition of marker images using vision sensors is presented. The existing AGV moving control system using infrared-ray sensors and landmarks have faced at two critical problems. Since there are many windows in a crematorium, they are going to let in too much sunlight in the main hall which is the moving area of AGVs. Sunlight affects the correct recognition of landmarks due to refraction and/or reflection of sunlight. The second one is that a crematorium has a narrow indoor environment compared to typical industrial fields. Particularly when an AVG changes its direction to enter the designated furnace the information provided by guided sensors cannot be utilized to estimate its location because the rotating space is too narrow to get them. To resolve the occurrences of such circumstances that cannot access sensing data in a WSN environment, a relative distance from marker to an AGV will be used as fingerprinting used for location estimation. Compared to the existing fingerprinting method which uses RSS, our proposed method may result in a higher reliable estimation of location. Our experimental results show that the proposed method proves the correctness and applicability. In addition, our proposed approach will be applied to the AGV system in the crematorium so that it can transport a dead body safely from the loading place to its rightful destination.

A Precision Control of an Automatic Guided Vehicle Using Double Landmark Recognition in a Crematorium

We deal with the problem of moving control of an automatic guided vehicle (AGV) in a specific environment, that is, a crematorium which has a narrow indoor environment. In such an environment, an AGV itself can transport a dead body to a designated furnace safely. A well-known method of burying guided lines under the floor is not proper to such an environment because its floors are made of expensive materials, i.e., marbles, and thus it has no flexibility. In this paper a new method of precision control of the AGV using infrared ray sensors is presented. With this approach, the AGV itself emits infrared rays to the landmarks adheres to the ceiling to obtain a moving direction and then moves to that direction by correctly recognizing them. One of the typical problems in a crematorium is that dead zone and overlapping zone may exist due to radiation and reflection of lights. To resolve this, an algorithm of recognizing double landmarks is applied to reduce its sensing errors. In addition, when the AGV changes its direction to enter the furnace, a precision control of the wheel moving trajectories of the AGV under acceleration and velocity constraints should be needed. Our proposed method formulates and simulates the desired trajectory of the AGV and then modifies it to compensate delay dynamics and vibration. The effectiveness of the proposed method was demonstrated in a real crematorium.

이중 랜드마크 인식 기반 AGV 이동 제어

본 논문에서는 화장장이란 특수한 실내 공간에서 시신을 최종 목적지인 화장로까지 안전하게 운구할 수 있는 무인이송차량(AGV)의 이동 제어 문제를 다루고자 한다. 바닥에 유도라인을 매립하는 방식은 화장장 환경에 적합하지 않기 때문에, 적외선 센서 기반 AGV 이동 궤적 제어 방식을 제안한다. 이 방식은 AGV가 근적외선을 방사하여 미리 부착된 랜드마크(landmark) 판독을 통해 해당 경로를 따라 주행하게 된다. 이러한 방식이 갖는 문제점은 랜드마크 배열 과정에서 사각 지역(dead zone) 및 중첩 지역(overlap zone)이 존재할 수 있다는 점이다. 이를 해결하기 위해 이중 랜드마크 인식을 통해 센싱 과정에서의 오차 발생 과정을 최소화할 것이다. 또한, 화장로에 진입하기 위한 회전 구간에서는 회전 직후 화장로의 진입로와 일직선을 유지하도록 AGV 안쪽 바퀴와 바깥쪽 바퀴의 가속도 제어를 위한 알고리즘을 제안할 것이다. 본 논문에서 제안한 방식은 모의 차량에 적용하여 그 타당성을 검증하였다. 실제 국내 화장장에 본 논문에서 개발한 AGV 시스템을 적용하여 오차 범위 내에서 동작함을 확인하였다. In this paper the problem of a moving control of an automatic guided vehicle(AGV) which transports a dead body to a designated cinerator safely in a crematorium, an special indoor environment, will be discussed. Since a method of burying guided lines in the floor is not proper to such an environment, a method of moving control of an AGV based on infrared ray sensors is now proposed. With this approach, the AGV emits infrared ray to the landmarks adheres to the ceiling to find a moving direction and then moves that direction by recognizing them. One of the typical problems for this method is that dead zone and/or overlapping zone may exist when the landmarks are deployed. To resolve this problem, an algorithm of recognizing double landmarks at each time is applied to minimize occurrences of sensing error. In addition, at the turning area to entering the designated cinerator, to fit an AGV with the entrance of the designated cinerator, an algorithm of controlling the velocity of both the inner and outer wheel of it. The functional correctness of our proposed algorithm has been verified by using a prototype vehicle. Our real AGV system has been applied to a crematorium and it moves automatically within an allowable range of location error.

ｅ‐ｈｏｕｓｅ，ｅ‐ｈｅａｌｔｈｃａｒｅ 赤外線センサー群から得られた生活データの統計的解析 異常発見支援システムの開発へ向けて

A statistical analysis is performed on the human activities in daily life . The data were obtained from seven infra-red ray sensors(attached by Ohta et al.)to several rooms at the single-living elderly home. It is shown that the position and movement of the person are finely reproduced, if a suitable pre-operation is performed on those data. A system for finding the abnormalities in activities is proposed based on the staying time distribution to characteristic states(places). Basic problems including the stationarity and the time-dependence of the statistics are investigated toward the realization of this system.