In robot vision system, enormously large computation power is required to perform three-dimensional (3-D) instrumentation and object recognition. However, many kinds of complex and irregular operations are required to make accurate 3-D instrumentation and object recognition in the conventional method for software implementation. In this paper, a VLSI-oriented Model-Based Robot Vision (MBRV) processor is proposed for high-speed and accurate 3-D instrumentation and object recognition. An input image is compared with two-dimensional (2-D) silhouette images which are generated from the 3-D object models by means of perspective projection. Because the MBRV algorithm always gives the candidates for the accurate 3-D instrumentation and object recognition result with simple and regular procedures, it is suitable for the implementation of the VLSI processor. Highly parallel architecture is employed in the VLSI processor to reduce the latency between the image acquisition and the output generation of the 3-D instrumentation and object recognition results. As a result, 3-D instrumentation and object recognition can be performed 10000 times faster than a 28.5 MIPS workstation.

This paper proposes a group demodulator that employs multi-symbol chirp Fourier transform to demodulate pulse shaped and time asynchronous signals without degradation; this is not possible with conventional group demodulators based on chirp Fourier transform. Computer simulation results show that the bit error rate degradation of the proposed group demodulator at BER=10-3 is less than 0.3dB even when a root Nyquist (α=0.5) filter is used as the transmission pulse shaping filter and the symbol timing offset between the desired channel and the chirp sweep is half the symbol period.

This paper presents a mathematical formulation of a data path allocation and floorplanning problem using the mixed integer linear programming, and shows some experimental results. We assume that a data flow graph and the scheduled result are given in advance. The chip area and total wire length are used for the quality measures of the solution for the problem. This method is applied to some examples, and compared with the other method reported previously in the points of the solution and computation time.

Electromagnetic power absorption in multilayered tissue media including anisotropic muscle regions whose principal dielectric axes (that is, muscle fibers) have various directions are analyzed by using 44 matrix method. Numerical calculations in 10kHz-10MHz show the effects of orientation of muscle fibers and polarization of incident wave on absorbed power density in tissues.

The frequency characteristics of whole-body averaged specific absorption rates (SARs) in a human model exposed to a near field of an electric dipole or a magnetic dipole are calculated, using a finite-difference time-domain method. The dependences of the characteristics on the orientation of the dipole and on the distance from the source to the model are investigated. It is shown that the resonant peak of the SAR that appears in the E-polarized far-field exposure is observed only when the source is E-polarized and is located at 80cm, while the peak vanishes or is not noted when the source is located at 40cm and 20cm nor when it is H-polarized. The relationships between the whole-body averaged SARs and the incident electromagnetic field strengths are also investigated. It is suggested that the spatially-averaged value of the dominating component between the electric field and the magnetic field over the space where a human body would occupy provides a relevant measure to estimate the whole-body averaged SAR of a body in the vicinity of a small radiation source.

To investigate the effect of alkyl chain length and adsorption time on the charge-transfer complex formation, ultraviolet-visible absorption and inelastic electron tunneling (IET) spectroscopy measurements were carried out for the tetramethylphenylenediamine (TMPD; donor molecule) adsorbed dodecyl-, pentadecyl- and octadecyl-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films. In the optical absorption spectra, the main peak of LB films shows a red-shift depending on alkyl chain length and adsorption time. Furthermore, the dependence on alkyl chain length and adsorption time are also shown in the IET spectra. These results demonstrate that adsorption LB methods enable to control the adsorption ratio of functional molecules and the CT complex formation.

In order to realize a continuous-time system model in digital computers, we must construct a discrete-time system model simulating the continuous-time processes in some characteristic aspect. Though many discretization methods have been proposed, they do not necessarily provide a discrete-time system in which input, state and output are identical with the sampled values of the original continuous-time system. The isomorphism discretization that all of the input, state and output of a continuous-time system can be recovered from the corresponding discrete-time system is crucial for our analysis. This paper aims at guaranteeing the isomorphism between a continuous- and a discrete-time system models (fluency system model) which were proposed by the authors. The isomorphism of input space had been already shown in the previous works by one of the authors. In this paper, by showing the isomorphism of the state function and output spaces, the aim will be achieved.

We report the dispersion of two-photon absorption (TPA) coefficient, (β), in polydiacetylene (12, 8) thin film waveguides in the wavelength range less than the one-photon band-gap with a 100 femtosecond mode-locked Ti: Sapphire laser pulses. The TPA coefficient was found to be 4 cm/GW for TE polarization at 900 nm (1.38 eV) by taking into account a Gaussian intensity distribution as well as a temporal pulse shape. We observed a sharp resonance in β above the first one-photon allowed transition with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 90 meV.

The Minimum Covering Run (MCR) expression used for representing binary images has been proposed [1]-[3]. The MCR expression is an adaptation from horizontal and vertical run expression. In the expression, some horizontal and vertical runs are used together for representing binary images in which total number of them is minimized. It was shown that, sets of horizontal and vertical runs representing any binary image could be viewed as partite sets of a bipartite graph, then the MCR expression of binary images was found analogously by constructing a maximum matching as well as a minimum covering in the corresponding graph. In the original algorithm, the most efficient algorithm, proposed by Hopcroft, solving the graph-theoretical problems mentioned above, associated with the Rectangular Segment Analysis (RSA) was used for finding the MCR expression. However, the original algorithm still suffers from a long processing time. In this paper, we propose two new efficient MCR algorithms that are beneficial to a practical implementation. The new algorithms are composed of two main procedures; i.e., Partial Segment Analysis (PSA) and construction of a maximum matching. It is shown in this paper that the first procedure which is directly an improvement to the RSA, appoints well a lot of representative runs of the MCR expression in regions of text and line drawing. Due to the PSA, the new algorithms reduce the number of runs used in the technique of solving the matching problem in corresponding graphs so that satisfactory processing time can be obtained. To clarify the validity of new algorithms proposed in this paper, the experimental results show the comparative performance of the original and new algorithms in terms of processing time.

IC performance simulation for statistical purpose is usually very time-consuming since the scale and complexity of IC have increased greatly in recent years. A common approach for reduction of simulation cost is aimed at the nature of simple modeling instead of actual circuit performance simulations. In this paper,a stochastic interpolation model (SIM) scheme is proposed which overcomes the drawbacks of the existing polynomial-based approximation schemes. First,the dependence of the R2press statistic upon a parameter in SIM is taken into account and by maximizing R2press this enables SIM to achieve the best approximation accuracy in the given sample points without any assumption on the sample data. Next, a sequential sampling strategy based on variance analysis is described to effectively construct SIM during its update process. In each update step, a new sample point with a maximal value of variance is added to the former set of the sample points. The update process will be continued until the desired approximation accuracy is reached. This would eventually lead to the realization of SIM with a quite small number of sample points. Finally, the coefficient of variance is introduced as another criterion for approximation accuracy check other than the R2press statistic. The effectiveness of presented implementation scheme is demonstrated by several numerical examples as well as a statistical circuit analysis example.

Water desorption from interlayer dielectric, spin-on-glass and SiO2 film deposited with tetraethylorthosilicate and O3, was controlled in order to reduce MOSFET hot-carrier degradation by using plasma SiO2 film as a water blocking layer. Two kinds of plasma SiO2 film were used in this study: SiH4 plasma SiO2 film deposited with SiH4 and N2O, and TEOS plasma SiO2 film deposited with TEOS and O2. Thermal desorption spectroscopy was used to study water desorption. Reduction of water desorption was obtained using plasma SiO2 film with water blocking ability; this reduction of water desorption resulted in suppression of the MOSFET hot-carrier degradation. The water blocking ability was obtained by low pressure deposition for SiH4 plasma SiO2 and low flow rate ratio of TEOS to O2 deposition for TEOS plasma SiO2. Water absorption studies of plasma SiO2 film using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy revealed that water blocking ability is associated with small amount of water absorption both in SiH4 plasma SiO2 film and in TEOS plasma SiO2 film. Consequently, it is considered that the water blocking ability, as well as water absorption, of plasma SiO2 film depends on porosity.

This paper presents a linear time algorithm for testing whether or not there is a path ,vm> of an undiercted tree T (|V(T)|n) that coincides with a string ss1sm (i.e., label(v1)label(vm)s1sm). Since any path of the tree is allowed, linear time substring matching algorithms can not be directly applied and a new method is developed. In the algorithm, O(n/m) vertices are selected from V(T) such that any path pf length more than m 2 must contain at least one of the selected vertices. A search is performed using the selected vertices as 'bases' and two tables of size O(m) are constructed for each of the selected vertices. A suffix tree, which is a well-known-data structure in string matching, is used effectively in the algorithm. From each of the selected vertices, a search is performed with traversing the suffix tree associated with s. Although the size of the alphabet is assumed to be bounded by a constant in this paper, the algorithm can be applied to the case of unbounded alphabets by increasing the time complexity to O(n log m).

Photonic ATM switching systems with Terabit/s throughput are desirable for future broadband ISDN systems. Since electronic LSI-based ATM switching systems are planned to have the throughput of 160Gb/s, a photonic ATM switching system should take the role of the highest layer in a hybrid switching network which includes electronic LSI-based ATM switching systems as its sub-system. This report discusses the state-of-the-art photonic devices needed for a frequency-self-routing ATM photonic switching system with maximum throughput of 5Tb/s. This kind of systems seems to be a moderate system for the first phase photonic switching system with no insuperable obstacle for initiating development, even though none of the devices and technologies required have yet been developed to meet the specifications. On the contrary, for realizing further enlarged throughput as the second-phase photonic switching system, there are huge fundamental research projects still remaining for establishing the technology utilizing the spectrum broadened over 120nm and highly-dense FDM technologies based on homodyne coherent detection, if supposing a simple architecture. "Ultra devices" seem to be the photonic devices based on new tailored materials of which gain and refractive index are designed to realize ultra-wide spectrum utilization.

In this paper we investigate the AM languages that seem to be located outside NP co-NP. We give two natural examples of such AM languages, GIP and GH, which stand for Graph Isomorphism Pattern and Graph Heterogeneity, respectively. We show that the GIP is in ΔP2 AM co-AM but is unlikely to be in NP co-NP, and that GH is in ΔP2 AM but is unlikely to be in NP co-AM. We also show that GIP is in SZK. We then discuss some structural properties related to those languages: Any language that is polynomial time truth-table reducible to GIP is in AM co-AM; GIP is in co-SZK if SZK co-SZK is closed under conjunctive polynomial time bounded-truth-table reducibility; Both GIP and GH are in DP. Here DP is the class of languages that can be expressed in the form X Y, where X NP and Y co-NP.

This paper points out that there are two types of claw free families with respect to a level of claw freeness. We formulate them as weak claw free families and strong claw free families. Then, we present sufficient conditions for each type of claw free families. (A similar result is known for weak claw free families.) They are represented as some algebraic forms of one way functions. A new example of strong claw free families is also given.

High variability of object features and bad class separation of objects are the main causes for the difficulties encountered during the interpretation of ground-level natural scenes. For coping with these two problems we propose a method which extracts those regions that can be segmented and immediately recognized with sufficient reliability (core regions) in the first stage, and later try to extend these core regions up to their real object boundaries. The extraction of reliable core regions is generally difficult to achieve. Instead of using fixed sets of features and fixed parameter settings, our method employs multiple local features (including textural features) and multiple parameter settings. Not all available features may yield useful core regions, but those core regions that are extracted from these multiple features make a cntributio to the reliability of the objects they represent. The extraction mechanism computes multiple segmentations of the same object from these multiple features and parameter settings, because it is not possible to extract such regions uniquely. Then those regions are extracted which satisfy the constraints given by knowledge about the objects (shape, location, orientation, spatial relationships). Several spatially overlapping regions are combined. Combined regions obtained for several features are integrated to form core regions for the given object calss.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression algorithm using a polygonal approximation and the template beat variation method (TBV) has been evaluated by reconstruction error and automatic interpretation. The algorithm combining SAPA3 with TBV (SAPA3/TBV) has superior compression performance in PRD and compression ratio. The reconstruction errors, defined as the difference of the amplitude and the time duration between the original ECG and the reconstructed one, are large at waves with small amplitude and/or gradual slopes such as the P wave. Tracing rebuilt from the compressed ECG has been analysed using the automatic interpretative program, and the diagnostic answers with the realated measurements have been compared with the results obtained on the original ECG. The data compression algorithms (SAPA3 and SAPA3/TBV) have been tested on 100 cases in the data base produced by CSE. The reconstruction errors are related to the diagnostic errors. The TBV method suppresses these errors and more than 90% of diagnostic agreements at the error limit of 15µV can be obtained.

Since carelessness in driving causes a terrible traffic accident, it is an important subject for a vehicle to avoid collision autonomously. Real-time collision detection between a vehicle and obstacles will be a key target for the next-generation car electronics system. In collision detection, a large storage capacity is usually required to store the 3-D information on the obstacles lacated in a workspace. Moreover, high-computational power is essential not only in coordinate transformation but also in matching operation. In the proposed collision detection VLSI processor, the matching operation is drastically accelerated by using a Content-Addressable Memory (CAM) which evaluates the magnitude relationships between an input word and all the stored words in parallel. A new obstacle representation based on a union of rectangular solids is also used to reduce the obstacle memory capacity, so that the collision detection can be parformed only by parallel magnitude comparison. Parallel architecture using several identical processor elements (PEs) is employed to perform the coordinate transformation at high speed based on the COordinate Rotation DIgital Computation (CORDIC) algorithms. The collision detection time becomes 5.2 ms using 20 PEs and five CAMs with a 42-kbit capacity.

Field distributions and energy flows of the surface waves excited in singlelayer-overcoated gratings are evaluated in order to investigate the behavior of the resonance absorption in the grating.

The character binarization method MTC is developed for enhancing the recognition of characters in general outdoor images. Such recognition is traditionally difficult because of the influence of illumination changes, especially strong shadow, and also changes in character, such as apparent character sizes. One way to overcome such difficulties is to restrict objects to be processed by using strong hypotheses, such as type of object, object orientation and distance. Several systems for automatic license plate reading are being developed using such strong hypotheses. However. their strong assumptions limit their applications and complicate the extension of the systems. The MTC method assumes the most reasonable hypotheses possible for characters: they occupy plane areas, consist of narrow lines, and external shadow is considerably larger than character lines. The first step is to eliminate the effect of local brightness changes by enhancing feature including characters. This is achieved by applying mathematical morphology by using a logarithmic function. The enhanced gray-scale image is then binarized. Accurate binarization is achieved because local thresholds are determined from the edges detected in the image. The MTC method yields stable binary results under illumination changes, and, consequently, ensures high character reading rates. This is confirmed with a large number of images collected under a wide variety of weather conditions. It is also shown experimentally that MTC permits stable recognition rate even if the characters vary in size.