| 11. Stirling Engine
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| @From 1982 to 1987, MEL was involved in the Moonlight Project, and as part of this work, carried out fundamental studies towards improving the design of Stirling engines. The work covered investigations of design methods, heat exchangers, and gas seals, and culminated in the production and performance testing of four practical engines and their associated systems.
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| 12. Event-driven Knowledge-based Control Machining System
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| @An intelligent machining system was developed which has knowledge of machining processes similar to that of a trained machinist, and is able to deal with unexpected accidents. When an abnormal or faulty condition was detected, the system could reason a strategy to avoid potential trouble and make a corrected control command using its knowledge-base. Intelligent sensing technologies such as in-process tool failure diagnosis based on Wavelet Transform have also been developed.
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| 13. Flexible Manufacturing System Complex with Laser Processing
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| @From 1977 to 1984 work was carried out towards the development of automated systems for the small batch production of machine components. MEL played a leading role in the planning and execution of this project, and in the final stages a test plant was constructed in Tsukuba for operational evaluation. The plant included a 20 kw laser, made use of new flexible machining techniques, and was the subject of world-wide attention.
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| 14. Two-Fingered Hand for Micro-Manipulation
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| @To achieve dexterous precise manipulation, a two fingered microhand has heen developed from ideas based on chopstick usage. The hand has two layers of parallel mechanisms, each with six degrees of freedom. The lower layer provides global motion of the two fingers, and the upper layer allows relative motion of one finger with respect to the other, for example, the motion to open and close the fingers. Using this mechanism, coordinated motion of the two fingers to manipulate micro objects can be achieved simply without complicated control algorithms. The hand could successfully manipulate a glass hall 2Κm in diameter to an accuracy of 0.1 Κm.
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| 15. Biped Walking Robot "MeltranU"
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| @Anew control method for biped walking robots based on "linear inverted pendulum mode" has been developed. It can immediately generate each leg joint trajectory which enables stable dynamic walking under the given body trajectory. The method has been implemented on the biped walking robot "Meltran U" which was originally developed at MEL and confirmed to be effective. Using this method, the robot could not only walk forward, backward, and step in place, but also move on an irregular surface with sensory feedback.
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