Search results

Janette Rowland has been appointed marketing services manager of General Hybrid. Based at their facility on Tyneside, and reporting to the general sales manager, Ms Rowland is responsible for all PR, marketing support and promotional activities for General Hybrid worldwide. She joins the company from CSM, a software house, where she held the position of marketing executive.

The world’s first time‐of‐flight (TOF) 3D range camera without moving parts, based on a custom solid‐state imaging device is described in this article. With the single exception of the smart‐pixel array, only electronic and optical standard components are used. The range camera does not need any mechanically scanning parts. It acquires 10 range images per second and achieves a resolution of a few centimeters over a distance range of 10‐20 meters for non‐cooperative targets. The illumination source consists of 160 LEDs, modulated at 20MHz, with a total optical power of about 800mW. The description of the smart pixel’s working principle and the presentation of our first 3D measurements are completed with a discussion of the theoretical limitations and a comparison with the system performance.

Film digitisers and writers allow quantitative information to be extracted from photographic material. One such digitiser is in Joyce Loebl's Scandig range.

The purpose of this paper is to present the latest sensing structure designs and principles of information detection of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) displacement sensors. Research advance and the future work in this field have been described, with the background that displacement and deformation measurements are universal and crucial for structural health monitoring.

This paper analyzes and summarizes the existing FBG displacement sensing technologies from two aspects principle of information detection (wavelength detection, spectral bandwidth detection, light intensity detection, among others) and principle of the sensing elastomer structure design (cantilever beam type, spring type, elastic ring type and other composite structures).

The current research on developing FBG displacement sensors is mainly focused on the sensing method, the construction and design of the elastic structure and the design of new information detection method. The authors hypothesize that the following research trends will be strengthened in future: temperature compensation technology for FBG displacement sensors based on wavelength detection; a study of more diverse elastic structures; and fiber gratings manufactured with special fibers will greatly improve the performance of sensors.

The latest sensing structure designs and principles of information detection of FBG displacement sensors have been proposed, which could provide important reference for research group.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the sensing characteristics of uniform fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG) by presenting a detailed research review. Temperature, axial strain, bending, vibration and refractive index measurands of FBG and TFBG sensor are presented and some significant differences are found.

Theoretical analysis and practical application in engineering are investigated and compared from other authors' research papers and self analysis. Spectra behavior of both FBG and TFBG are discussed.

There are found to be significant differences in temperature, axial strain, bending, vibration and refractive index sensing characteristics of FBG and TFBG.

The paper's analysis is comprehensive and clear and provides readers with the sensing characteristics of FBG and TFBG in detail.

Existing robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) system lacks of force feedback, and it cannot provide the surgeon with interaction forces between the surgical instruments and patient’s tissues. This paper aims to restore force sensation for the RMIS system and evaluate effect of force sensing in a master-slave manner.

This paper presents a four-DOF surgical instrument with modular joints and six-axis force sensing capability and proposes an incremental position mode master–slave control strategy based on separated position and orientation to reflect motion of the end of master manipulator to the end of surgical instrument. Ex-vivo experiments including tissue palpation and blunt dissection are conducted to verify the effect of force sensing for the surgical instrument. An experiment of trajectory tracking is carried out to test precision of the control strategy.

Results of trajectory tracking experiment show that this control strategy can precisely reflect the hand motion of the operator, and the results of the ex-vivo experiments including tissue palpation and blunt dissection illustrate that this surgical instrument can measure the six-axis interaction forces successfully for the RMIS.

This paper addresses the important role of force sensing and force feedback in RMIS, clarifies the feasibility to apply this instrument prototype in RMIS for force sensing and provides technical support of force feedback for further clinical application.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the detection performance of infrared photoelectric detection system and establish stable tracking platform.

This paper puts forward making use of the finite element analysis method to set up the infrared radiation characteristics calculation model of flying target in infrared photoelectric detection system; researches the target optical characteristics based on the target imaging detection theory; sets up the heat balance equation of target’s surface node and gives the calculation method of total radiation intensity of flying target; and deduces the target detection distance calculation function; studies the changed regulation of radiation energy that charge coupled device (CCD) gain comes from target surface infrared heat radiations under different sky background luminance and different target flight attitude.

Through calculation and experiment analysis, the results show that when the target’s surface area increases or the target flight velocity is higher, the radiation energy that CCD obtained is higher, which is advantageous to the target stable detection in infrared photoelectric detection system.

This paper uses the finite element analysis method to set up the infrared radiation characteristics calculation model of flying target and give the calculation and experiment results; those results can provide some data and improve the design method of infrared photoelectric detection system, and it is of value.