• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.270-279
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• 2005

Under the research project supported by Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), we have conducted the development of GPR systems for landmine detection. Until 2005, we have finished development of two prototype GPR systems, namely ALIS (Advanced Landmine Imaging System) and SAR-GPR (Synthetic Aperture Radar-Ground Penetrating Radar). ALIS is a novel landmine detection sensor system combined with a metal detector and GPR. This is a hand-held equipment, which has a sensor position tracking system, and can visualize the sensor output in real time. In order to achieve the sensor tracking system, ALIS needs only one CCD camera attached on the sensor handle. The CCD image is superimposed with the GPR and metal detector signal, and the detection and identification of buried targets is quite easy and reliable. Field evaluation test of ALIS was conducted in December 2004 in Afghanistan, and we demonstrated that it can detect buried antipersonnel landmines, and can also discriminate metal fragments from landmines. SAR-GPR (Synthetic Aperture Radar-Ground Penetrating Radar) is a machine mounted sensor system composed of B GPR and a metal detector. The GPR employs an array antenna for advanced signal processing for better subsurface imaging. SAR-GPR combined with synthetic aperture radar algorithm, can suppress clutter and can image buried objects in strongly inhomogeneous material. SAR-GPR is a stepped frequency radar system, whose RF component is a newly developed compact vector network analyzers. The size of the system is 30cm x 30cm x 30 cm, composed from six Vivaldi antennas and three vector network analyzers. The weight of the system is 17 kg, and it can be mounted on a robotic arm on a small unmanned vehicle. The field test of this system was carried out in March 2005 in Japan.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.1D
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• pp.25-32
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• 2009

Currently, various types of TDM (Transportation Demand Management) policies are being studied and implemented in an attempt to overcome the limitations of supply oriented policies. In this context, this paper addressed issues of effectiveness and possible domestic implementation of the HOT lane. The possible site of implementation selected for this simulation study is part of the Kyung-bu freeway, where a dedicated bus lane is currently being operated. Minimum length of distance required in between interchanges and access points of the HOT lane for vehicles to safely enter and exit the lane, and traffic management policies for effectively managing the weaving traffic trying to enter and exit the HOT lane were presented. A 5.2km section of freeway from Ki-heuing IC to Suwon IC and a 8.3km section from Hak-uei JC to Pan-gyo JC have been selected as possible sites of implementation for the HOT lane, in which congestion occurs regularly due to the high level of travel demand. VISSIM simulation program has been used to analyze the effects of the HOT lane under the assumption that one-lane HOT lane has been put into operation in these sections and that the lane change rate were in between 5% to 30%. The results of each possible scenario have proven that overall travel speed on the general lanes have increased as well by 1.57~2.62km/h after the implementation of the HOT lane. It is meaningful that this study could serve as a basic reference data for possible follow-up studies on the HOT lane as one effective method of TDM policies. Considering that the bus travel rate would continue increase and assuming the improvement in travel speed on general lanes, similar case study can be implemented where gaps between buses on bus lane are available, as a possible alternative of efficient bus lane management policies.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.99-107
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• 2024

Along with economic growth and industrial development, there is an increasing demand for various electronic components and device production of semiconductor, SMT component, and electrical battery products. However, these products may contain foreign substances coming from manufacturing process such as iron, aluminum, plastic and so on, which could lead to serious problems or malfunctioning of the product, and fire on the electric vehicle. To solve these problems, it is necessary to determine whether there are foreign materials inside the product, and may tests have been done by means of non-destructive testing methodology such as ultrasound ot X-ray. Nevertheless, there are technical challenges and limitation in acquiring X-ray images and determining the presence of foreign materials. In particular Small-sized or low-density foreign materials may not be visible even when X-ray equipment is used, and noise can also make it difficult to detect foreign objects. Moreover, in order to meet the manufacturing speed requirement, the x-ray acquisition time should be reduced, which can result in the very low signal- to-noise ratio(SNR) lowering the foreign material detection accuracy. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a five-step approach to overcome the limitations of low resolution, which make it challenging to detect foreign substances. Firstly, global contrast of X-ray images are increased through histogram stretching methodology. Second, to strengthen the high frequency signal and local contrast, we applied local contrast enhancement technique. Third, to improve the edge clearness, Unsharp masking is applied to enhance edges, making objects more visible. Forth, the super-resolution method of the Residual Dense Block (RDB) is used for noise reduction and image enhancement. Last, the Yolov5 algorithm is employed to train and detect foreign objects after learning. Using the proposed method in this study, experimental results show an improvement of more than 10% in performance metrics such as precision compared to low-density images.