Abstract. This work presents a detailed design of a three-jointed tendon-driven robot finger with a cam/pulleys transmission and joint Variable Stiffness Actuator (VSA). The finger motion configuration is obtained by deriving the cam/pulleys transmission profile as a mathematical solution that is then implemented to achieve contact force isotropy on the phalanges. A VSA is proposed, in which three VSAs are designed to act as a muscle in joint space to provide firm grasping. As a mechatronic approach, a suitable type and number of force sensors and actuators are designed to sense the touch, actuate the finger, and tune the VSAs. The torque of the VSAs is controlled utilizing a designed Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) fuzzy controll

Cost is the essence of any production process for it is one of the requirements for the continuity of activities so as to increase the profitability of the economic unit and to support the competitive situation in the market. Therefore, there should be an overall control to reduce the cost without compromising the product quality; to achieve this, the management should have detailed credible and reliable information about the cost to be measured, collected, understood and to analyze the causes for the spread of deviations and obstacles the management faces, and to search for the factors that trigger the emergence of these deviations and obstacles

      In this research, the nonparametric technique has been presented to estimate the time-varying coefficients functions for the longitudinal balanced data that characterized by observations obtained through (n) from the independent subjects, each one of them is measured repeatedly by group of  specific time points (m). Although the measurements are independent among the different subjects; they are mostly connected within each subject and the applied techniques is the Local Linear kernel LLPK technique. To avoid the problems of dimensionality, and thick computation, the two-steps method has been used to estimate the coefficients functions by using the two former technique. Since, the two-

In order to get better understanding of asphalt pavement performance, asphalt from five Iraqi refineries (Qayarah, Nassiriyah, Baiji, Samawah and Daurah) were analyzed into five chemical fractions including asphaltenes, polar compounds, first acidaffins, second acidaffins and saturated hydrocarbons where the last four fractions called maltenes. Polar compounds /saturated hydrocarbons ratio (PC/S) and the ratio of the reactive to the unreactive components of the maltenes fraction (durability rating) parameters were determined. The study showed that Baiji asphalt has the best durability over other asphalts, while Qayarah asphalt is considered to have the least durability grade. These results confirm the correlation of the chemical composit

     Dropping packets with a linear function between two configured queue thresholds in Random Early Detection (RED) model is incapable of yielding satisfactory network performance. In this article, a new enhanced and effective active queue management algorithm, termed Double Function RED (DFRED in short) is developed to further curtail network delay. Specifically, DFRED algorithm amends the packet dropping probability approach of RED by dividing it into two sub-segments. The first and second partitions utilizes and implements a quadratic and linear increase respectively in the packet dropping probability computation to distinguish between two traffic loads: low and high. The ns-3 simulation performance evaluations clearly indicate t

Chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs) are toxic chemical entities emitted invariably from stationary thermal operations when a trace of chlorine is present. Replacing the high-temperature destruction operations of these compounds with catalytic oxidation has led to the formulation of various potent metal oxides catalysts; among them are ceria-based materials. Guided by recent experimental measurements, this study theoretically investigates the initial steps operating in the interactions of ceria surface CeO2(111) with three CVOC model compounds, namely chloroethene (CE), chloroethane (CA) and chlorobenzene (CB). We find that, the CeO2(111) surface mediates fission of the carbon–chlorine bonds in the CE, CA and CB molecules via mo

In this note, we present a component-wise algorithm combining several recent ideas from signal processing for simultaneous piecewise constants trend, seasonality, outliers, and noise decomposition of dynamical time series. Our approach is entirely based on convex optimisation, and our decomposition is guaranteed to be a global optimiser. We demonstrate the efficiency of the approach via simulations results and real data analysis.

A new flow injection spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of copper ion Cu(II) in water samples (tap water and river water).The proposed method based on the formation of red complex [Cu(L)2(NO3)2] which has a maximum absorption at λmax=490 nm. Linear range for Cu (II) was from 5-70μg/mL with detection limit 2.55μg/mL. The effect of physical and chemical parameters were evaluated .The proposed method was applied successfully for determination of copper (II) in the tap and river water. [Cu(L)2(NO3)2] complex was prepared in a (2:1) mole ratio as ( reagent: copper (II)).The analytical reagent formed by reaction of thymol with 4-aminoantipyrine at room temperature. The metal complex was characterized by IR, UV-Visi

In current article an easy and selective method is proposed for spectrophotometric estimation of metoclopramide (MCP) in pharmaceutical preparations using cloud point extraction (CPE) procedure. The method involved reaction between MCP with 1-Naphthol in alkali conditions using Triton X-114 to form a stable dark purple dye. The Beer’s law limit in the range 0.34-9 μg mL^-1 of MCP with r =0.9959 (n=3) after optimization. The relative standard deviation (RSD) and percentage recoveries were 0.89 %, and (96.99–104.11%) respectively. As well, using surfactant cloud point extraction as a method to extract MCP was reinforced the extinction coefficient(ε) to 1.7333×105L/mol.cm in surfactant-rich phase. The small volume of organi

This paper presents a combination of enhancement techniques for fingerprint images affected by different type of noise. These techniques were applied to improve image quality and come up with an acceptable image contrast. The proposed method included five different enhancement techniques: Normalization, Histogram Equalization, Binarization, Skeletonization and Fusion. The Normalization process standardized the pixel intensity which facilitated the processing of subsequent image enhancement stages. Subsequently, the Histogram Equalization technique increased the contrast of the images. Furthermore, the Binarization and Skeletonization techniques were implemented to differentiate between the ridge and valley structures and to obtain one