An omnidirectional platform with an Active Offset Split Caster (ASOC) is described and its ability to operate on non-ideal floors is studied. It is shown that all of its driven wheels of the platform will remain in contact with an uneven floor at all times, a condition necessary to maintain good traction and dead-reckoning capabilities. It is shown that planning algorithms developed for an idea...

Despite that omni-directional mobile robots have been employed popularly in several application areas, effort on optimal design of such mobile robots has been few in literature. Thus, this paper investigates the optimal design of omni-directional mobile robots. Particularly, optimal design parameters such as one or double offset distance of wheel mechanism and the wheel radius are identified wi...

Automatic or semi-automatic segmentation of anatomical structures in three-dimensional datasets is still an ambitious challenge in medical image computation. The scope of application contains visualization, diagnosis, and preplanning of operations. This paper presents a 3D GPUbased level-set solver for segmentation which focuses on segmenting and rendering large volumes. Neither the volume nor ...

The aim of this study was to evaluate three types of walkers for elderly people. Four elderly patients participated in the study. The experiments were performed using three walkers: a familiar conventional folding walker, a caster walker and a power-assisted walker. We evaluated walking speed, body acceleration and an electromyogram of the gastrocnemius during use of each walker. The results in...

The refractive index of liquid solutions at the He-Ne laser wavelength, 0.6328 microm, is presented. The measurements were carried out using the conventional minimum deviation method of an equilateral hollow glass prism. The refractive indices of sucrose, sodium chloride, glucose, and caster sugar solutions for a range of density varying from distilled water to a saturated condition were measur...

From the end of the 19th century, the development of a process for manufacturing thin plastic films was tightly linked to the emerging industry for movies and photographic films. 5 mil (125 micron) film was produced using a discontinuous device with a caster moving over 200 feet long glass plates at Eastman KODAK [1]. Soon, first patents were issued to cast celluloid films on a moving surface b...

Based on kernel estimator and wavelet technique, we have identified 22 moving group candidates in the solar neighborhood from a sample which includes around 14000 dwarfs and 6000 giants. Six of them were previously known as the Hercules stream, the Sirus-UMa stream, the Hyades stream, the Caster group, the Pleiades stream and the IC 2391; five of them have also been reported by other authors. E...

the morphology of retinal photoreceptor layer was studied in continuous light-exposed and dark-adapteddomestic male cats (felis catus). the eyes of 12 healthy adult cats (4 in continuous light-exposed group, 4 in continuous dark-adapted group, and 4 in control group) were routinely fixed and studied by electron microscope. results showed that the general structure of photoreceptor layer in this...