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This paper describes a microcomputer-controlled hydraulic actuator designed with controllability, flexibility and ease-of-use as the fundamental goals. To achieve this, the electronics, valving, sensors and hydraulic cylinder are contained in a single, pre-engineered package. The embedded electronics provide complete closed-loop control of the actuator, including self-diagnostic capability and nonvolatile storage of application specific motion programs. Multiple actuators can be controlled via a serial communications bus to execute coordinated motions, or individual actuators can operate as stand-alone devices with simple on-off inputs to control their motion. This self-contained motion control package is well suited for the new generation of increasingly automated mobile machinery.

During the next ten years the United States will experience a change in farm structure. A smaller number of farms will be producing more food. Both very small and very large farms will increase in numbers. They will change to be more diversified in production, utilize on-farm processing of consumer products, and apply advances in automation. These changes are needed to provide consumers food that is cost and quality competitive in worldwide markets. This paper is intended to instill the reader into becoming aware of the changes in technology, marketing, banking, labor and population interests. These trends will direct new farm mechanization towards intelligent machines capable of doing a multitude of tasks. Advances in vision systems, lasers, speech recognition, and bubble memory will be incorporated into mechanized robots and controlled traffic systems. In no way is this paper to be construde as a forecast because the direction of technology can not be forecasted.

With increasingly more in-vehicle systems and functions being implemented in a modern vehicle, wiring constraints demand that these features share resources. From a cost-effective systems integration viewpoint, it is required to connect these functions/devices on a single network such as CAN. As the number of systems and functions within the network grows, there is the need to intelligently priorities the messages taking into account the dynamic scenarios with the vehicle-operating environment. This paper addresses the problem by presenting two message prioritisation methods, namely static grid association and a dynamic prioritization method with an incident detector. The static grid association method uses a message based systematic technique to assign message priority in the network design stage. The development of a fuzzy incident detector enables the dynamic assignment of message priority within the network. An application example is also presented.

The introduction of microcomputer technology into the industrial and consumer marketplaces has contributed to a significant growth in product efficiency, utility, reliability, and performance. Combining the intelligence of the microcomputer with the muscle of hydraulics has now greatly enhanced the creativeness of mobile equipment design. Significant strides have already been made with hydraulic excavator applications. Additional excavator advancements are in progress with a number of lattice boom and hydraulic crane developments soon to be accomplished. These current and proposed applications provide the basis for the topic of discussion.

This paper deals with a new multi-axis motion control method for high performance machine tool systems. The intelligent multi-axis motion control system proposed is mainly composed of a multi-axis motion trajectory monitoring system and an intelligent compensator with dynamic gain control. The multi-axis motion trajectory monitoring system calculates the motion trajectory error of all axes. The intelligent compensator with the dynamic gain control dynamically changes the servo gain to prevent a motion error from happening. A feasibility verification of the system is conducted on an actual CNC machining center. It is found that the new control method could improve the motion trajectory accuracy of the axes greatly. The control concept, system design, system implementation as well as the feasibility study of this new control system are described.

The adoption of digital media in the car is rapidly growing; with that are an increasing number of disparate media sources such as portable media players, satellite radio, and HD radio. Media sources utilize various user access models creating a critical standardization problem in the entertainment sub-system design making navigating media in the car not only difficult but a dangerous driver distraction. Each media source creates different metadata and uses slightly different user models contributing to the overall lack of metadata standardization and can result in inaccurate or missing tag information, and multiple categories for the same piece of media. A band like “The Rolling Stones” may be categorized as “Classic Rock” on a satellite system but as “Rock” on a portable MP3 player plugged into the entertainment subsystem.

Today’s intelligent self-driving vehicles alongside technology development are more believable. One of the intelligent features of self-driving cars is autonomous parking which has been specifically considered in industry and academic research areas. This paper focuses on the autonomous parallel parking. First, the vehicle kinematics modeling by considering Ackermann angle calculation has been thoroughly explained and then the desired path by satisfying spatial conditions and its proportional steering angle is extracted. Autonomous parking scenario has been defined based on two phases of forward and backward motions. Accordingly, the desired training data includes steering angle and vehicle motion feedbacks (x, y, φ) that are utilized for designing intelligent controller. The proposed control system has two levels: upper and lower level.

We developed an intelligent power IC suitable for automotive applications, which integrated CMOS, Bipolar and LDMOS and which was fabricated on 0.65 μm design rule process. This IC employs trench-dielectric-isolation (TD) technology and power device technology that improves the ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) robustness. TD technology employing an SOI (Silicon On Insulator) wafer and deep trench isolation realizes very narrow isolation width with no parasitic device. It enables the easier mixing of various circuits on a single chip with high integration density. The power device technology of improves ESD robustness, enables reduction in the number of protection devices in automotive Electronic control units (ECUs), which connect with the power IC output terminals. Therefore, the intelligent power IC developed here can reduce ECU component numbers and hence ECU size, and is applicable to various kinds of ECUs and smart actuators with high reliability at lower cost.

New man-machine interfaces require new concepts to drive, pilot and control new car actuators. To answer partially to these requirements, a group of car manufacturers, equipment manufacturers and silicon manufacturers worked in the frame of the International Standardization Organization (ISO) to define one major component of these new interfaces: The Intelligent Power Switch (IPS) During the last three years, we defined the most important parameters, the environmental conditions, the functionality, and the associated test methods. All these data are compiled in an international standard. This standard describes two types of components: the high side intelligent power switch (HSIPS) and the low side intelligent power switch (LSIPS). The purpose of this presentation is to explain the technical choices made by the ISO Group. THE WORK OF THE ISO GROUP allowed the realization of a standard on the High side and Low side power switches for automotive applications.

With the introduction of advanced digital road maps, which include information on the slope and curve radius of the highways, predictive control for standard and hybrid commercial vehicles, based on these maps, is about to be released by the vehicle manufacturers. For example, intelligent predictive cruise control has been announced for introduction in 2012 by Scania and Daimler. In addition, hybrid commercial city buses like MAN's Lion's City Hybrid have already been implemented. But the question remains about the type of vehicle suitable for the implementation of predictive intelligent concepts, due to the high investment cost compared to the sometimes relatively low operating cost savings.

Aircraft production is facing various technical challenges, such as large product dimensions, complex joining processes and the organization of assembly tasks. Meeting the requirements that come with large dimensions, low tolerances and small batch sizes, in combination with complex joining processes, automation and labor-intensive inspection task, is often difficult to achieve in an economically viable way. ZeMA believes that a semi-automated approach is the most effective for optimizing aircraft section assembly. An effective optimization of aircraft production can be achieved with a semi-automated riveting process for solid rivets using Human-Robot-Collaboration in combination with an intuitive Human-Machine-Interaction operating concept. While using dynamic task sharing between human and robot based on their skills, and considering ergonomics, the determined ideal solution involves placing a robot inside the section barrel.

The transfer case adjusts the vehicle axle torque distribution by controlling the transfer case clutch torque, thereby improving vehicle traction and stability. This paper proposed an intelligent real-time 4WD control method, consist of intelligent preload control, active yaw control and slip control. When the vehicle is under stable driving conditions, the transfer case clutch torque is set to zero to obtain good economy performance. When the vehicle is under acceleration, climbing, slippery road or off-road conditions, the transfer case clutch preload torque control is large to achieve strong 4WD traction ability. In steering conditions, the transfer case clutch torque is adjusted through active yaw control to improve the vehicle handling and stability. When one single axle has a tendency to slip, the proposed slip control can quickly engage the transfer case clutch to avoid single wheel slip and improve vehicle traction performance.

Various researches have shown those vehicles travelling at excessive speed are more likely to cause an accident. In UK, an estimated 1,200 fatalities per year on the roads can be attributed to inappropriate vehicle speed. It is believed that if it were possible to control vehicle speed within the legally accepted limits, on the road, the number and severity of these fatalities would be greatly reduced. Therefore, there is a need to develop methods of externally or remotely controlling or adapting vehicle speed limits. One method of affecting the necessary speed limits would be through the development of intelligent remote speed control system that employs the technologies of Intelligent Transport System that focuses on infrastructure - vehicle - infrastructure communication. An intelligent methodology is needed to integrate the technologies, the driver and the vehicle in order to start to address some of the concerns of deploying the systems.

Recent advances in technology allow machine safeguarding to shift from a system that completely shuts down the hazardous part of a machine, regardless of the action, to one with a controlled response. This intelligent robotics safeguarding can be based on conditions such as the type of task, how it is performed, entry and exit locations, and the operator’s movement within the hazard zone. Such a strategy could increase production rates by allowing robots to operate at higher speeds within dynamic environments. When used as part of a preventative maintenance program, reliability data can predict component failure rates and reduce the probability that operators will access the hazard zone. Programming techniques, such as function blocks to monitor component usage, can be used to evaluate trends. SQL (Structured Query Language) databases can track access and frequency trends, which can lead to design improvements and indicate changes affecting the system.

An innovative program is described to improve emergency vehicle deployment by automatically alerting all other nearby vehicles on the road as to the presence and intention of the emergency vehicle. Since the use of audible sirens has somewhat marked effectiveness nowadays, in selecting the most practical automated method to notify most drivers a review is given of the various data-links that are available today, including plans for new standards. The research presented concludes that use of today’s newer vehicle data-links is currently ineffective due to the fragmentation and, in many cases, low adoption rates, including satellite radio, HD and conventional radio, automatic cruise control radar, and vehicle telematics.

Friction materials used in the brake linings of automobiles, trucks, buses and other vehicles are required to satisfy a number of performance demands: they must provide a dependable, consistent level of friction, excellent resistance to wear, adequate heat dissipation, structural integrity, low cost and, if possible, light weight. No single material can meet all of these often conflicting performance criteria, and as a consequence, multiphase composites have been developed, consisting typically of a dozen or more different materials. The choice of materials is crucial in determining the performance attained, yet to date, braking material compositions have been developed largely on the basis of empirical observations.

An approach to designing an intelligent vehicle controller for partially supporting driver operation of a vehicle is proposed. Vehicle behavior is regarded as a system performed by the interaction between the driving environment, vehicle as a machine and driver expectations for the vehicle movements. Driver intention to accelerate or decelerate is mainly generated by the perception of the driving environment. The model we propose involves information on the driving environment affecting driver intention taking driver differences in perceiving the driving environment into account. An engineering model for installing the vehicle controller is expressed by a multipurpose decision-maker allowing explicit treatment of the driving environment, vehicle action, and driver intention. A reasoning engine deals with differences in individual driver traits for generating intention to decelerate by using fuzzy integrals and fuzzy measures.

A new type of systems, including in a single system multiple sensors and correlating measuring with feature analysis capabilities and control capabilities, is presented. The new systems are based on nonlinear dynamics and mimic living organism functions and sensing-control abilities. The patented systems comprise a nonlinear system that includes several sensors as elements of the system and whose dynamic is essentially chaotic. The characterization of the nonlinear dynamics (chaotic regime) reveals the intimate correlation between the values the sensors measure, thus evidencing features and patterns in the measured space. These patterns, at their turn, produce a specific control action. Several experimental examples of sensing-monitoring-control systems are presented and their advantages in space applications are discussed.