• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.364-371
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to review recent developments in lower limb exoskeletons. The exoskeleton system is a human-robot cooperation system that enhances the performance of the wearer in various environments while the human operator is in charge of the position control, contextual perception, and motion signal generation through the robot's artificial intelligence. This system is in the form of a mechanical structure that is combined to the exterior of a human body to improve the muscular power of the wearer. This paper is followed by an overview of the development history of exoskeleton systems and their three main applications in military/industrial field, medical/rehabilitation field and social welfare field. Besides the key technologies in exoskeleton systems, the research is presented from several viewpoints of the exoskeleton mechanism, human-robot interface and human-robot cooperation control.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.837-856
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• 2016

Underwater image enhancement has received considerable attention in last decades, due to the nature of poor visibility and low contrast of underwater images. In this paper, we propose a new automatic underwater image enhancement algorithm, which combines nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) domain enhancement techniques with the mechanism of the human visual system (HVS). We apply the multiscale retinex algorithm based on the HVS into NSCT domain in order to eliminate the non-uniform illumination, and adopt the threshold denoising technique to suppress underwater noise. Our proposed algorithm incorporates the luminance masking and contrast masking characteristics of the HVS into NSCT domain to yield the new HVS-based NSCT. Moreover, we define two nonlinear mapping functions. The first one is used to manipulate the HVS-based NSCT contrast coefficients to enhance the edges. The second one is a gain function which modifies the lowpass subband coefficients to adjust the global dynamic range. As a result, our algorithm can achieve contrast enhancement, image denoising and edge sharpening automatically and simultaneously. Experimental results illustrate that our proposed algorithm has better enhancement performance than state-of-the-art algorithms both in subjective evaluation and quantitative assessment. In addition, our algorithm can automatically achieve underwater image enhancement without any parameter tuning.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.1099-1110
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• 2020

This research tests the effects of institutional pressures, the use of performance measurement systems and accountability, and moderation effects of human resource capability between institutional pressures and the use of performance measurement systems in the Local Government institutions in Indonesia. The research aims to provide empirical evidence both quantitatively and qualitatively that isomorphism institutional pressures occurred in the scope of implementation of the performance measurement system and accountability in the public sector organizations and to show the importance of human resource capability enhancement in reducing external pressure impact. In addition, it tries to develop the correlation model of institutional pressures, human resource capability, implementation of the performance measurement system, and accountability of public sector organizations. The research used mixed methods with sequential explanatory design. The data collection used surveys and interviews in 209 regency/Special Region of Yogyakarta and Central Java local governments as samples. The research result indicated that the institutionalization process of the performance measurement is influenced by institutional pressures, especially coercive and mimetic pressures. Human resource capability was unable to weaken institutional pressures effects in the performance measurement system implementation. The research also proved that the use of a performance measurement system was able to improve local government institution accountability.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.13-24
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• 2002

Reduction and prevention of human error is one of the major interests for the enhancement of system safety and availability in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). As human beings have become the weak point in the system safety, a systematic evaluation on human performance during emergency situation should be performed in advance to identify the potential vulnerability of human tasks. Though the data gathering and analysis from real field is an important precondition, there were no available data in nuclear field of korea. This paper presents the result of human performance analysis on emergency tasks in NNPs. Firstly, a task analysis was performed to identify the characteristics of operator tasks during emergency condition and to classify them into a set of generic emergency tasks. Secondly, simulation data were collected and analyzed for the emergency tasks using the full scope simulator of Younggwang NPPs. The analyzed human performance information cover the event diagnosis time, the execution time of each procedural step, observation parameters, typer of irrelevant response, pattern of communication among staffs, and so on. These performance data would be used for human reliability analysis and the research of human error as technical bases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.709-718
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• 2019

The international nuclear industry has undergone a lot of changes since the Fukushima, Chernobyl and TMI nuclear power plant accidents. However, there are still large and small component deficiencies at nuclear power plants in the world. There are many causes of electrical equipment defects. There are also factors that cause component failures due to human errors. This paper analyzed the root causes of failure and types of human error in 300 cases of electrical component failures. We analyzed the operating experience of electrical components by methods of root causes in K-HPES (Korean-version of Human Performance Enhancement System) and by methods of human error types in HuRAM+ (Human error-Related event root cause Analysis Method Plus). As a result of analysis, the most electrical component failures appeared as circuit breakers and emergency generators. The major causes of failure showed deterioration and contact failure of electrical components by human error of operations management. The causes of direct failure were due to aged components. Types of human error affecting the causes of electrical equipment failure are as follows. The human error type group I showed that errors of commission (EOC) were 97%, the human error type group II showed that slip/lapse errors were 74%, and the human error type group III showed that latent errors were 95%. This paper is meaningful in that we have approached the causes of electrical equipment failures from a comprehensive human error perspective and found a countermeasure against the root cause. This study will help human performance enhancement in nuclear power plants. However, this paper has done a lot of research on improving human performance in the maintenance field rather than in the design and construction stages. In the future, continuous research on types of human error and prevention measures in the design and construction sector will be required.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.383-392
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to develop three Judo-doll systems for enhancement of Judo's performance. Traditional Judo training requires a human training partner. Unfortunately it is not always easy to find one. Multifunctional Judo-doll training system has therefore been developed, and is described here. The system consists of a dummy, a power generating mechanism, and kinematic links. The power-generating mechanism generates forces similar to those of a human, by adjusting deadweights and controlling powderbrake's forces. The powderbrake force is controlled by the microprocessor according to the exercise scenario. The kinetic links, which mimic a human training partner's motions, has been developed based on a $Vicon^{TM}$ system's analysis of the movement of human training partners. This mechanism whose name is "L link-wire" consists of L type links, wire, roller, and dead weight. This mechanism generates the force that leads the link to the neutral position regardless the link is pushed or pulled. The lifting mechanism that lifts the doll when the one-armed shoulder throw skill is applied is also developed. A 32-bit microprocessor controls the whole system; it reads the loadcell data, controls the electromagnetic force, and communicates with a PC via Bluetooth. The training history, including loadcell data, date, and training time, is stored in the PC for analysis. This training system can be used to enhance the Judo performance of any self training player.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.52-58
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• 2014

Exact histogram specification (EHS) transforms the histogram of an input image into the specified histogram. In the conventional EHS techniques, the pixels are first sorted according to their graylevels, and the pixels that have the same graylevel are further differentiated according to the local average of the pixel values and the edge strength. The strictly ordered pixels are then mapped to the desired histogram. However, since the conventional sorting method is inherently dependent on the initial graylevel-based sorting, the contrast enhancement capability of the conventional EHS algorithms is restricted. We propose a modified EHS algorithm considering the just noticeable difference. In the proposed algorithm, the edge pixels are pre-processed such that the output edge pixels obtained by the modified EHS can result in the local contrast enhancement. Moreover, we introduce a new sorting method for the pixels that have the same graylevel. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides better image enhancement performance compared to the conventional EHS algorithms.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.160-171
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• 1999

The paper examines the ride performance enhancement that can be obtained by applying hydraulic semiactive vibration absorbers(SAVa) to alter the compliance characteristics of the seat/wheel suspension system. The work relies on a consistent model of the (nonlinear) hydrodynamics of the SAVA. A recently developed Lyapunov control scheme is used to provide regulation.. The performance is first examined assuming a quarter car with a seat/seat mounted mass. The paper then employs a quarter car/seat with a two mass ISO model of the seated human . The simulated results indicated that a reduction of 45% of the peak vertical acceleration is achievable with new system.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.4E
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• pp.125-133
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• 2004

In this paper, we propose a critical banded wavelet packet-based spectral subtraction for speech enhancement. Critical banded wavelet packet, which reflects the human auditory system, may lead to minimization of intelligibility loss and quality improvement of the enhanced speech in the spectral domain, when combined with an appropriate spectral subtraction gain function. The proposed method shows better performance than the conventional one in comparative assessments. We also show that, for effective evaluation of enhanced speech, it is essential to consider the characteristics of speech quality measures.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.108-116
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose an image enhancement method based on Multi-Scale Retinex theory that designs Unsharp Masking Filter (UMF) and emphasizes the contrast ratio adaptively. Unsharp Masking (UM) technique emphasizes image sharpness and improves contrast ratio by adding high frequency component to the original image. The high frequency component is obtained by differentiating between original image and low frequency image. In this paper, we present how to design an UMF kernel and to adaptively apply it to increase the contrast ratio according to multi-scale retinex theory which resembles human visual system. Experimental results show that the proposed method has better quantitative performance indexes such as PSNR, ambe & SSIM and better qualitative feature like halo artifact suppression.