Background: As ways to optimize the mobilization of postural stability muscles for sitting up motions, arm reaching motions and head raising motions have important effects. Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the effects of reaching to sit-up training on the trunk muscle activity, postural ability, and balance ability of patients with hemiplegia due to stroke. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Methods: This study was conducted with 18 stroke patients who met the selection criteria divided into two groups: a study group of 9 patents and a control group of 9 patients. The study group carried out reaching to sit-up training, which can promote trunk muscles and improve control through trunk interactions. The control group received general physical therapy intervention Results: The activity of the trunk muscle was significantly different before and after intervention in study and control group. The functional reaching test showed significant changes in both the study group and the control group. The timed up and go test showed a significant change in the study group. Conclusion: Reaching to sit-up training for 4 weeks showed increases in trunk muscle activity in stroke patients and was effective in improving balance ability.

Background: ErigoPro enables acute stroke patients to carry out stable weight-bearing training with gradual verticalization. Study on the effectiveness of robotic assisted treatment equipment for chronic patients is insufficient. Objectives: This study aims to investigate the effect of dynamic vertical posture training using ErigoPro on trunk alignment and balance in chronic stroke patients. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Methods: The subjects of this study were 30 patients were randomly assigned to a study group of 15 patients and a control group of 15 patients. The study intervention was carried out for 50 minutes per day consisting of 30 minutes of general neuro-physiotherapy and 20 minutes of ErogoPro training, 3 times a week for 8 weeks. Results: The study group showed difference in trunk inclination (P<.05), kyphotic angle (P<.05), lateral deviation of the spine (P<.05), thoracic angle (P<.01), timed up and go test (P<.01), Berg balance score (P<.01). There was a significant difference between the groups in the trunk inclination (P<.05), timed up and go test (P<.01), Berg balance score (P<.05). Conclusion: It could be seen that the treatment combined with ErigoPro training for 8 weeks was effective in restoring trunk alignment and improving balance ability in chronic stroke patients.

Although monitoring of radon has been extensively implemented throughout South Korea, the risk assessment has been mainly limited to indoor environments such as schools, workplaces, and multi-use facilities, and evaluations have normally been performed separately. In this study, the differences in radon exposure according to two groups (< 1 and 1-6 years old) were evaluated considering various indoor and outdoor environments, timeactivity patterns, variations in radon concentrations, and dwelling type (single detached and apartment house) using Monte-Carlo simulation. The distribution and representative values of radon concentration by micro-environments were confirmed through the Anders-Darling test, and a uniform distribution was applied in case of uncertainty. The effective dose ranged from 1.81 ± 1.19 to 2.81 ± 3.02mSv/y. Comparing the levels recommended by EPA, WHO, and ICRP with the value of the 95th percentile of this study, it was found that the results for those dwelling in detached houses exceeded recommended levels. Infants that spend a lot of time in homes with relatively high levels of concentration of radon are assessed to be somewhat more vulnerable to radon exposure.

Some animals have special sensing functions in order to find foods, home and mates. Instead of passively sensing, they discharge signals and then extract necessary information from the response. More importantly, they utilize the gradients of the sensed signal in order to find the destination or objects. In this paper this special strategy is formulated mathematically, i.e., the perturbation and the correlation based gradient estimation is developed. A stereo sensor system using temperature sensors mounted on motors is developed for verification. The proposed method can estimate the gradient of the measured value accurately. Using this method, the direction in the maximum measured value can be estimated accurately, and the position of the heat source can be estimated from the intersection of the directions estimated from both sensors.

Haptic systems have been widely used for both virtual reality and augmented reality application including game, entertainment, education and medical sectors. Clothing designers and retailers initiated using AR and VR technologies to help the consumers find style with the perfect fit. Most of the developed augmented reality shopping is implemented by overlapping the image of the clothes on the customer so that he/she can find the fit. However, those are only visual information and the customer cannot experience the real size and the stiffness of the clothes. In this paper, we present the haptic upper garment which provides the haptic feedback to the user using cables. By controlling the length of the cable, the size of the clothes is set and by stiffness control, the compliance of the fabric is implemented. The haptic garment is modeled for precise control and the distributed controller architecture is described. With the haptic upper garment, the user’s experience of the virtual clothes is greatly enhanced.

Due to the low localization accuracy and the requirement of special infrastructure, current LBS(Localization Based Service) is limited to show P.O.I.(Point of Interest) nearby. Improvement of IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit) based deadreckoning is presented in this paper. Additional sensors such as the magnetic compass and magnetic flux sensors are used as well as the accelerometer and the gyro for getting more information of movement. Based on the pedestrian movement, appropriate sensor information is selected and the complementary filter is used in order to enhance the accuracy of the localization.

This paper presents the use of 3 axis accelerometer for getting the gait information including the number of gaits, stride and walking distance. Travel distance is usually calculated from the double integration of the accelerometer output with respect to time; however, the accumulated errors due to the drift are inevitable. The orientation change of the accelerometer also causes error because the gravity is added to the measured acceleration. Unless three axis orientations are completely identified, the accelerometer alone does not provide correct acceleration for estimating the travel distance. We proposed a way of minimizing the error due to the change of the orientation. Pedestrian localization is implemented with the heading angle and the travel distance. Heading angle is estimated from the rate gyro and the magnetic compass measurements. The performance of the localization is presented with experimental data.

To achieve autonomous mobile robot navigation, accurate localization technique is the fundamental issue that should be addressed. In augmented reality, the position of a user is required for location-based services. This paper presents indoor localization using infrared reflective artificial landmarks. In order to minimize the disturbance to the user and to provide the ease of installation, the passive landmarks are used. The landmarks are made of coated film which reflects the infrared light efficiently. Infrared light is not visible, but the camera can capture the reflected infrared light. Once the artificial landmark is identified, the camera’s relative position/orientation is estimated with respect to the landmark. In order to reduce the number of the required artificial landmarks for a given environment, the pan/tilt mechanism is developed together with the distortion correction algorithm.

The Mobile robots are increasingly being used to perform tasks in unknown environments. The potential of robots to undertake such tasks lies in their ability to intelligently and efficiently search in an environment. An algorithm has been developed for robots which explore the environment to measure the physical properties (dust in this paper). While the robot is moving, it measures the amount of dust and registers the value in the corresponding grid cell. The robot moves from local maximum to local minimum, then to another local maximum, and repeats. To reach the local maximum or minimum, simple gradient following is used. Robust estimation of the gradient using perturbation/correlation, which is very effective when analytical solution is not available, is described. By introducing the probability of each grid cell, and considering the probability distribution, the robot doesn’t have to visit all the grid cells in the environment still providing fast and efficient sensing. The extended algorithm to coordinate multiple robots is presented with simulation results.