Katsumi Hirai

Pipe inspection robot using a wireless communication system

Pipe lines of any material need to be inspected after a certain number of years. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a flexible pipe inspection robot using a wireless communication system. In this research, a wireless communication system is tested, and it is verified that the system can transmit image information steadily at a high speed. On the basis of this wireless communication system, a new pipe inspection robot for drain pipes is developed. With this new system, the movement of the robot can be controlled, defects or other problems inside a pipe can be inspected, and an image of the inside of the pipe can also be transmitted in real time.

Energy saving system for office lighting by using PSO and ZigBee network

In order to reduce the amount of wasted energy in office lighting and provide a major contribution to lowering overall energy consumption, we are developing a new energy saving system for office lighting by using adjustable lamp, ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).In this paper we make a prototype system which consists of one ZigBee control module, four fluorescent lamps with dimming capacity and three illumination sensors.The illumination sensors collect and send the data to the control module. After the PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) process, the module finally sets the power of the lamps according to the PSO result. After real experiments in both sunny day and cloudy dayin a small-size office, it was proved that the system can successfully control the lights, and save considerable energy.