Jingeng Mai

Future Manufacturing Industry with Cloud Manufacturing

Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is a new way to promote the further development of manufacturing industries. In this article, an envisioned picture of future manufacturing with CMfg which supports different advanced manufacturing modes, including intelligent manufacturing, sustainable manufacturing, agile manufacturing, and personalized social production mode was described. Some important technologies for building resources/capabilities and knowledge services platforms of CMfg were introduced. Several typical applications of CMfg, such as manufacturing communities, virtual industry clusters, 3D printing, cloud service evaluation, and hybrid cloud manufacturing were discussed.

A 3D Visualization Framework for Real-time Distribution and Situation Forecast of Atmospheric Chemical Pollution

The visualization system of pollutant distribution contributes to scientific decision-making in the emergency pollution affairs. In this paper, we propose a framework which supports 3D visualization for real-time distribution and situation forecast of atmospheric chemical pollution. The core of our framework is a distributed system infrastructure, which is designed for massive data storage and parallel computing. The stored data includes terrain elevation, vector maps, satellite maps, meteorological data and concentration data from gas sensors. High-performance computing generates gridded data for visualization. Web-based 3D visual applications with B/S structure support cross-platform terminal access.

Research and Applications of Cloud Manufacturing in China

This chapter leads to the achievements of research and applications in Cloud Manufacturing (CMfg) carried out by the authors’ team. First of all, the meaning of Big Manufacturing is given, and the challenges and strategies for manufacturing industries as well as the content and development of manufacturing informatization are analyzed. Then the definition, concept model, system architecture, technologies, typical technical characteristics, and service object and content of CMfg are put forward. Moreover, discussions are shown to prove that CMfg is a new paradigm and approach to realize manufacturing informatization, which materializes and extends Cloud Computing in the manufacturing domain. The current status of the technologies, applications, and industries for CMfg in China are presented. Concerns are mostly focused on the 12 key technologies for the CMfg System (also called Manufacturing Cloud), including system overall technology, sensing technology for manufacturing resource and capability, virtualization and service technology for manufacturing resource and capability, construction and management technology for virtual manufacturing environment, operation technology for virtual manufacture environment, evaluation technology for virtual manufacturing environment, trusted service technology for virtual manufacturing, management of knowledge, model and data, pervasive human–computer interaction technology, application technology of service platform, informatized manufacturing technology system, and product service technology. The academic research results of the authors’ team are presented. Furthermore, four typical CMfg cases which have been successfully implemented in group enterprises and mid-small enterprise clusters are described as well as cases introducing smart manufacturing into smart city. Finally, future works and development prospect for CMfg are raised.

Spatial Multi-resolution Terrain Rendering Based on the Improved Strategy for Terrain Dispatching and Pre-reading

In this paper, we propose an improved strategy of terrain dispatching and pre-reading during the process of spatial multi-resolution terrain rendering. The improved strategy is adopted to render the 3Dterrain. The fundamental step of the procedure is the terrain data processing including three parts of terrain data source, terrain data block and terrain texture generation. The ultimate goal is to render the terrain successfully via the proposed strategy of terrain dispatching and pre-reading. The displayed rendering effect demonstrates that the improved strategy is feasible and achievable.

A Real-Time Intent Recognition System Based on SoC-FPGA for Robotic Transtibial Prosthesis

This paper presents the design and implementation of a real-time intent recognition hardware system for robotic transtibial prosthesis, based on system-on-chip and field-programmable gate array (SoC-FPGA). The proposed system integrates the software programmability of an ARM-based processor with the hardware programmability of an FPGA. A hardware prototype was developed and a SVM-based pattern recognition algorithm was implemented with high-level synthesis technology. Experiments on a transtibial amputee subject demonstrated that the proposed system costs shorter decision time in identifying four lower-limb movement phases (sitting, standing, sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit).

Multi-class SVM Based Real-Time Recognition of Sit-to-Stand and Stand-to-Sit Transitions for a Bionic Knee Exoskeleton in Transparent Mode

Real-time locomotion intent recognition is a challenge in lower-limb exoskeletons. In this paper, we present a multi-sensor based locomotion intent prediction system for sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit transition recognition the subject wears a knee exoskeleton in transparent mode. The desired reference torque for movement control is obtained from a direct torque control loop. The feedback torque is estimated by an inner current control loop. Five able-bodied subjects were recruited in experiments. The classifier is based on multi-class Support Vector Machine. Four kinds of modes and four kinds of transitions are tested in this study. Recognition accuracy during steady periods is 99.68% ± 0.07% for five able-bodied subjects. And during transition periods, all the transitions are correctly detected and no missed detections was observed for all the trials of the five subjects. Preliminary experimental results show that the proposed method is capable of performing real-time intent recognition and consequently reduces the interaction force between human body and the exoskeleton.

An Unconventional Unmanned Autonomous Blimp: Design, Modeling and Simulation

In this paper, we present the design and simulation of an unconventional unmanned autonomous blimp. The dynamic model of the tri-ellipsoid blimp is built with mechanism analysis method. Based on dynamic modeling of the blimp, a PID controller against the disturbance during autonomous flight is designed. Simulation results show that the controller is valid with optimal control parameters.

Forearm Motion Recognition With Noncontact Capacitive Sensing

This study presents a noncontact capacitive sensing method for forearm motion recognition. A method is proposed to record upper limb motion information from muscle contractions without contact with human skin, compensating for the limitations of existing sEMG-based methods. The sensing front-ends are designed based on human forearm shapes, and the forearm limb shape changes caused by muscle contractions will be represented by capacitance signals. After implementation of the capacitive sensing system, experiments on healthy subjects are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness. Nine motion patterns combined with 16 motion transitions are investigated on seven participants. We also designed an automatic data labeling method based on inertial signals from the measured hand, which greatly accelerated the training procedure. With the capacitive sensing system and the designed recognition algorithm, the method produced an average recognition of over 92%. Correct decisions could be made with approximately a 347-ms delay from the relaxed state to the time point of motion initiation. The confounding factors that affect the performances are also analyzed, including the sliding window length, the motion types and the external disturbances. We found the average accuracy increased to 98.7% when five motion patterns were recognized. The results of the study proved the feasibility and revealed the problems of the noncontact capacitive sensing approach on upper-limb motion sensing and recognition. Future efforts in this direction could be worthwhile for achieving more promising outcomes.

Mechatronic design of an ankle-foot rehabilitation robot for children with cerebral palsy and preliminary clinical trial

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most prevalent physical disability originating in childhood and with impaired motor function secondary to injury of the immature brain. In this paper, we developed a robotic ankle-foot rehabilitation system for children with cerebral palsy (RARS-CP). We introduce the novelties in robot mechanical design, actuation and transmission, and hierarchical control system. Customized graphical user interfaces are developed in Labview environment based on FPGA-based embedded system. To validate the reliability and feasibility of the proposed system, we recruit a health subject and a child with CP to carry out experiments, respectively. In the experiment, we firstly verified characterization of low-level robot control, including three working modalities: position control, torque control and velocity-torque control. Then, we performed a passive stretching therapy and game-based active rehabilitation sessions for the patient to further test the whole system. Preliminary results about robot performance demonstrate that the proposed RARS-CP is a promising solution in CP clinical rehabilitation for ankle joint.

Research and Implementation of Smoke Diffusion Parallel Rendering Based on Memory Mapping and Billboard

Aiming at enhancing the rendering performance of complex natural phenomena such as smoke diffusion, a rendering approach based on Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) and particle system is designed and implemented in this paper. The strategy that host memory resource is mapped to the CUDA memory address, and the technique which uses two-dimensional textured planar graph to simulate the three-dimensional effect combined with CUDA parallel computing (the parallel billboard technique) are integrated applied. The simulation results demonstrate that this proposed approach can effectively accelerate the rendering process, save memory usage, and achieve impressive visual effects.