Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Customer testimony - Dr. Yongpeng Zhang, Prairie View A&m University, Texas

“Quanser simplified our researchers’ work, and our own programming can be conveniently built on the samples provided. We can now concentrate on the control theory and its algorithm development.”


Dr. Yongpeng Zhang, Assistant Professor, Prairie View A&M University, Texas















Tuesday, November 6, 2007

2DOF Table

A new module for the Quanser's Rotary Family (SRV02) is coming out soon. It is our first experiment that uses vision system (integrating with Point Grey cameras) to control the movement of the table.

1. Table moves ball in a circular path

2. Table "catches" the ball and centers it

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Robotic Arm Project at Harvard - from Dr. Robert Wood

...the robotics course was a hit! The students seemed to get a great deal of insight from programming the arm to do various tasks. we have some pictures and videos from the last lab, check out:

http://seas.harvard.edu/highlights/Roboarm.html

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Virtual Rehabilitation 2007 Conference, Venice, Italy

Held in Lido Venice, a small island off the city of Venice, this was certainly a different venue for a conference. On the grounds of the San Camillo hospital, renowned for its pioneering activities in the field of rehabilitation, a tent was setup in an “open concept” fashion with lots of fresh air, and beautiful vegetation. About 150 medical doctors, physiotherapists, engineers, and other health researchers were gathered at Virtual Rehabilitation Conference.

For the event, Quanser teamed up with Teoresi , our distributor in Italy. Product manager Enzo Bergamini from Teoresi, application engineer Michel Levis and channel sales director Martin Lord, both from Quanser, were present at the event.

Our booth was very popular – we had our haptic Telesurgery demonstration system, which included one 6DOF Mirage haptic robot and one 5DOF industrial robot, all controlled from a single PC running Simulink and Quanser’s own WinCon.
The standard demo was to sign one’s name on a sheet of paper secured on a soft sponge, but since we had the right audience, we even experimented with pear surgery!
On video we showed an application of haptics in rehabilitation with a 2DOF robot that we are developing in conjunction with the University of Toronto and the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. You will certainly hear more about this project in the near future.

A beautiful setting indeed – we hope to come back! “Thank you” to the organizing committee for its support during that event.

Quanser products in Colombia



ICL Didáctica Ltda., Quanser’s distributor in Colombia, attended VI Ibero-American Meeting of Engineering Education Institutions on October 17-19, 2007. This event, prepared together with XXVII National Meeting of Engineering Schools, brought representatives of more than 130 universities from Colombia, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Singapor and many other countries to the legendary city of Cartagena. Participants had a chance to see demonstrations of Quanser’s products and learn more about how Quanser equipment can help them and their students. If you did not have a chance to attend this event, you can still find out all that you need on our website http://www.quanser.com/.

To contact ICL, please visit http://www.icl-didactica.com/

TechNit-RT brings Quanser products to Brazilian Symposium on Intelligent Automation



Quanser’s distributor in Brazil, TechNit-RT, attended VIII Brazilian Symposium on Intelligent Automation (SBAI 2007), held on October 8 -11 on campus of Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. But Quanser’s products made appearance not only in TechNit’s booth – 2 papers presented at Symposium were based on research using our 3DOF Helicopter and Coupled Tank experiments.
Search the website http://www.quanser.com/ to find products you can use in your research and teaching activities.
To contact TechNit, please visit www.techsim.com.br

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Customer Testimony - Prof. Dr. Galip Cansever, Yildiz Technical University




Prof. Dr. Galip CANSEVER
Yildiz Technical University, Electrical & Electronics Faculty
Department of Electrical Engineering – Control Systems Division
34349 Yildiz / ISTANBUL
Position : Dean of the Electrical & Electronics Faculty - YTU


Teaching and Research Areas
- Fuzzy Logic Control of Continuous Processes
- Adaptive Control for Industrial Control and Automation Applications
- Robust Control for Industrial Control and Automation Applications.
- PLC Applications for Automation Systems
- Building Automation Systems
- SCADA and Process Control Applications


Taught Classes

UNDERGRADUATE
- Digital Systems
- Design of Digital Systems
- Automatic Control
- Programmable Logic Controller
- Process Control and Instrumentation
- Microprocessors and Their Industrial Applications

POSTGRADUATE
- Instrumentation and System Control
- Fuzzy Logic Control and It’s Industrial Applications
- Dynamic Modelling of the Engineering Systems
- Petri Net Based Supervisor Design for Discrete Event Systems
- Machinery Automation
- Microcontroller Based Machine Control

Professional Affiliations
-Head of Control and Command Systems Division.
- Head of Control and Automation Program in Institute for Graduate Studies in Science and Engineering.
- Member of Advisory Board at the Journal of Elevator World
- Member of Publication Committee at the Journal of Industrial and Automation


The Advantages of the Quanser Plants:
We have obtained double inverted pendulum and ball – beam experimental setups from your products for our control system design laboratory. Your installation manual is very clear to understand and very helpful for us that’s why we didn’t run into any difficulties while we were installing the devices.

In addition to this your detailed documents for students and instructors about experimental work showed us a good way to prepare our laboratory hand-outs. Our instructors can do more than one experiment with same Quanser device by the flexibility feature of your devices. Therefore variety of our experiments was increased.

Also your plants are very suitable for advance users who are the students of our graduate programs. Their simulation results were came to experimental results by the help of your products.

To sum up Quanser products are very helpful to analyze the basic control problems. They filled all the gap of our control system laboratory like we thought. I wish you all the best in your works.


Selected Publications
- Ayça Gökhan AK, Galip Cansever,“ Fuzzy Sliding Mode Con tr oller with RBF Neural Network for Robotic Manipulator Trajectory Tracking” 16-19 August 2006 Kunming-China, International Conference on Intelligent Computing. Lecture Notes in Con tr ol and Information Sciences (LNCIS).
- Beril Karagenç, Nimet Gençoğlu, Mustafa Ersoy, Galip Cansever and Güven Külekçi“ A Comparison of four Different Microleakage tests for Assessment of Leakage of Root Canal Fillings ”, Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology, and Endodontology, In Pres.2006
- A. Delibasi, I. B. Kucukdemiral, G. Cansever, “A Novel Variable Structure Based Adaptive Control with Disturbance Estimation for an Anthropomorphic Robot Manipulator” (to appear)
- G. Cansever and I. B. Kucukdemiral, “A new approach to supervisor design with sequential control petri-net using minimization technique for discrete event system,” International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, vol. 29, pp. 1267–1277, 2006.
- I.B. Kucukdemiral, S.N. Engin, V.E. Omurlu, G. Cansever, “A Robust Single Input Adaptive Sliding Mode Fuzzy Logic Controller for Automotive - Active Suspension System”, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3613, Jul 2005, pp.981 - 986
- Seydi Vakkas ÜSTÜN , Galip CANSEVER, “ Tuning of PI Controller Coefficients Using Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Network” Intelligent Engineering Systems Through Artificial Neural Networks; Smart Engineering System Design. ASME Pres Volume 11 New-York, pp:527, 2001
- Galip CANSEVER, Ş-N.ENGlN, O. F. ÖZGÜVEN, M. UZAM , "Fuzzy Logic Controller in Modern Control System: An industrial Application" , Advanced in Modeling and Analysis, Vol 43, No: l, pp 41-63 (23 pages), 1994
- Galip CANSEVER, H. Şeker, Beyhan Kılıç, " Electrical Modeling and Simulating of the Respiration System", Modeling, Measurements and Control, C, AMSE Press, Vol 44, No: 4, pp 19-37 (19 pages), 1994.


Prof. Dr. Galip CANSEVER

Friday, October 5, 2007

Customer Testimony - Mete Kalyoncu, Selcuk University




Mete KALYONCU
Assist. Professor,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering and Architecture,
University of Selçuk,
Alaeddin Keykubat Campus,
42079 Konya, TURKEY


Teaching and Research Areas
Mechanical Vibrations, System Dynamics, Automatic Control, Robotics, Mechanisms, Machine Dynamic, Fuzzy Logic Control In General And Fuzzy Robot Control In Particular, Application Of Artificial Intelligence Techniques In Robotics, Modelling And Simulation Of Robots, Control And Dynamic Of Robot Manipulator With Elalastic Arm.

Education
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Selçuk, 1990.
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Selçuk, 1993.
Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Selçuk, 1998.
Professional Society Affiliations
Chairman, branch of Konya, chamber of mechanical engineers, union of chambers of turkish engineers and architects.

Teaching and Research doing with Quanser’s Product
Control, dynamic modelling and simulation of robot manipulators with elalastic arm.

Advantages of Quanser’s Product
· Everything is ready to research and teach. We didn’t struggle to combine the component of experimental devices we need. We only run it. Our job is not to make experimental device, but it is to do research and teach. For this reason, Quanser’s product was very simplicity for us.
· Using the Quanser Flexible Link, we can easily do dynamical modeling and control of flexible robot arms.
· We can use the Quanser’s universal power supply and DAQ card in other applications, that is a big advantage for us.
· We can apply complex control strategies quickly and effectively.
· To be able to easily verify the theoritical results on the real plant improves the quality of the education.


Photos of Professor in laboratuary





Selected Papers
1. Kalyoncu, M., Botsalı, F. M., “Vibration Analysis Of An Elastic Robot Manipulator With Prismatic Joint And A Time Varying End Mass”, The Arabian Journal For Science And Engineering, v.29, s.1C, 27-38, 2004
2. Ankaralı, A., Kalyoncu, M., Botsalı, F. M., Şişman, T., “Mathematical Modeling And Simulation Of A Flexible Shaft-Flexible Link System With End Mass”, Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical System, V.10, N.3-4,187-200, 2004
3. Kalyoncu, M., Botsalı, F. M., “An analytical method for vibration analysis of elastic robot manipulator sliding in a translating prismatic joint”, S. Ü. Müh. Mim. Fak. Dergisi, Konya, c.14, s.1, 33-38, 1999.
4. Ankaralı, A., Kalyoncu, M., Botsalı, F. M., Şişman, T., “Mathematical Modelling Of A Flexible Shaft-Link System By Hamilton’s Prınciple”, S. Ü. Müh. Mim. Fak. Dergisi, Konya, c.17, s.2, 85-89, 2002.
5. Kalyoncu, M., Botsalı, F. M., “Effect of axial shortening on the vibration of elastic robot arm”, International Symposium, Second Turkish-German Joint Computer Application Days, Konya, 313-324, 15-16 October 1998.
6. Kalyoncu, M., Botsalı, F. M., “Lateral And Torsional Vibration Analysis Of Elastic Robot Manipulators With Prismatic Joint”, Proceedings of ETCE2002, ASME Engineering Technology Conference on Energy, Paper STRUC-29024, February 4-6, 2002, Houston, TX, USA, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Petroleum Division (Publication) PD, v 2, 2002, p 949-956
7. Kalyoncu, M., Ankaralı, A., Botsalı, F.M., Şişman, T., “Dynamic Modeling Of A Flexible Shaft-Link System With End Mass”, Proceedings of ESDA 2002: ESDA 2002 6th Biennial Conference On Engineering Systems Design and Analysis, Paper APM-107, July 8-11, 2002, İstanbul, TURKEY.
8. Mete KALYONCU, Mustafa TINKIR, Fuzzy Logic Control Of Structures Under Seismic Excitation, IMS'2006: 5th International Symposium On Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, Sakarya, Turkey May 29-31, 443-449, 2006
9. Mete KALYONCU, Mustafa TINKIR, Mathematical Model For Simulation And Control Of Nonlinear Vibration Of A Single Flexible Link, IMS'2006: 5th International Symposium On Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, Sakarya, Turkey, May 29-31, 435-442, 2006
10. Mete KALYONCU, Mustafa HAYDİM, Mustafa TINKIR, Position Control Of An Electrohydraulic Servo System Via Fuzzy Logic Approach, AMSE’06, International Conference On Modelling And Simulation (MS’06 Turkey), B121, 513-518, 28-30 August 2006.
11. Ümit ÖNEN, Fatih Mehmet BOTSALI, Mete KALYONCU, Dynamic Modelling And Vibration Analysis Of A Rigit - Flexible Robot Manipulator With Neural Network, AMSE’06, International Conference On Modelling And Simulation (MS’06 Turkey), B201, 157-161, 28-30 August 2006.


Mete KALYONCU
Assist. Professor,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, University of Selçuk

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Focus on Quanser by Maplesoft

Maple has posted an interview that we did with them awhile back about some of the specialty work we are doing:

http://www.maplesoft.com/community/podcast/view.aspx?SID=5187#

Friday, August 17, 2007

Customer Testimony: Kenichi Yano, Gifu University, Japan




Dr. Kenichi Yano
Associate Professor,
Department of Human and Information Systems, Faculty of Engineering, Gifu University,
1-1 Yanagido, Gifu, 501-1193
Japan



Teaching and Research Areas


Control theory and its applications to transfer systems, industrial robots and medical and welfare systems.


Projects with Quanser’s Product


Development of control system for welfare robots and medical systems.


Advantages of Quanser’s Product


It is very easy to start experiments with high specs. Therefore, we can avoid many troublesome works. For this reason, Quanser’s products are very effective for us.

Using the Quanser software, we can easily design control systems for many plants.

We can apply complex control strategies quickly and effectively.

It is very easy to verify the theoretical results on the real plant.


Selected Papers


K.Yano and K.Terashima, “Robust Liquid Container Transfer Control for Complete Sloshing Suppression”, IEEE Trans. on Control Systems Technology, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp.483-493, 2001

K.Terashima and K.Yano“Sloshing Analysis and Suppression Control of Tilting-Type Automatic Pouring Machine”, IFAC Journal of Control Engineering Practice, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp.607-620, 2001

K.Terashima, K.Yano, K.Okamura, H.Kawagishi and M.Watanabe, “An Optimum Design with Sloshing Suppression on Container Transfer Control of Molten Metal Using Computer Fluid Dynamics Model”, International Journal of Cast Metals Research, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 435-440, 2002, and Proc. of MCSP5 (5th Pacific Rim International Conference on Modeling of Casting & Solidification Processes) , 2001, Nagoya, Japan

Y. Shen, K. Terashima and K. Yano, “Optimal Control of Rotary Crane Using the Straight Transfer Transformation Method to Eliminate Residual Vibration”, Trans. of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, vol. 39, no. 9, pp. 817-826, 2003

K.Yano and K.Terashima, “Sloshing Suppression Control of Liquid Transfer Systems Considering 3D Transfer Path”, IEEE/ASME Trans. on Mechatronics, Vol.10 , No. 1, pp.8-16, 2005

K.Terashima, Y.Shen and K.Yano, “Modeling and Optimal Control of a Rotary Crane Using the Straight Transfer Transformation Method”, IFAC Journal of Control Engineering Practice, Vol.15, pp.1179-1192, 2007

A.Takemoto, K.Yano, and K.Terashima“Obstacle Avoidance Control System of Rotary Crane Using Proposed Haptic Joystick”, Proc. of First Joint EuroHaptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environments and Teleoperator Systems, Pisa, 18- 20 March, 2005

Y.Noda, K.Yano, and K.Terashima, “Control of Self-Transfer-Type Automatic Pouring Robot with Cylindrical Ladle” , Proc. of IFAC'05 (The 16th International Federation of Automatic Control Triennial World Congress) , Prague, 3- 8 July, 2005

Y.Shen, K.Terashima, and K.Yano, “Minimum Time Control Using Straight Transfer for a Rotary Crane”, Proc. of IFAC'05 (The 16th International Federation of Automatic Control Triennial World Congress) , Prague, 3- 8 July, 2005

K.Yano, A.Takemoto, and K.Terashima, “Semi-Automatic Obstacle Avoidance Control for Operation Support System with Haptic Joystick”, IROS'05 (IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems), pp. 698-703, Edmonton, Canada, 2 - 6 August, 2005

H.Esen, K.Yano and M.Buss“Interaction with Virtual Deformable Objects for Surgery Simulation Using a Hyper Redundant Haptic Display”, Proc. of Euro Haptics 2006, pp. 519-522, Paris, France, 3 –6 July, 2006

K.Yano, K.Kaneko, Y.Noda and K.Terashima, “Adaptive Feedforward Control of Automatic Pouring Robot Considering Influence of the Accumulating Disturbance”, Proc. of IEEE CCA (Conference on Control Applications), pp. 2820-2825, Muenchen, Germany4–6 October, 2006

K.Yano, K.Kaneko, Y.Noda and K.Terashima,, “Supervisory Control of Automatic Pouring Process Considering Residual Pouring Quantity”, Proc. of ECC (European Control Conference), pp. 2045-2050, Kos, Greece, 2 –5 July, 2007

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Margaret Atwood's autograph gadget helped by 'green factor' - Yahoo! Canada News

In case any of our customers don't know, we are involved in this project, and it is generating quite some interest (as well as sales):

********************
Wed Aug 15, 2:48 PM

By Cassandra Szklarski


TORONTO (CP) - Forget the posh downtown hotels or the chic restos. The best bet for celebrity sightings could soon be a humble bookstore or CD shop.

Author Margaret Atwood's unlikely invention, the LongPen, is moving into a record store and several bookstores in Canada, the United States and England for a trial run that could bring fans and their idols closer together.

Its makers are courting notables in the world of music, sports and film to start using the remote-controlled pen, which allows people to sign autographs from anywhere in the world and chat with others via videoconferencing.

Spokesman Bruce Walsh says shops with a LongPen kiosk could soon become hubs for celebrity sightings of a new kind.

"You could potentially see the talent in their dressing room, somewhere, and they could actually sign into a bookstore," says Walsh.

"It doesn't really matter, if there's a kiosk set up, you can sign all kinds of different kinds of talent into wherever the kiosk happens to be."

Kiosks will be set up at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, Barnes & Noble in New York and Waterstone's in London beginning after Labour Day, and could expand elsewhere if successful, he says. One machine will be in HMV's flagship record store in Toronto by the end of August.

The device - built by Atwood's Toronto-based company Unotchit - comprises a video screen and digital writing pad at one location and a video screen and automated pen at another.

Until now it has only been used by authors trying to reduce the rigours of book tours.

In recent days, U.S. author Norman Mailer and Ontario writer Alice Munro used it to appear at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland, while staying on this side of the Atlantic.

Neither would have been able to appear at the festival had it not been for the LongPen, says Walsh, noting that Mailer is 84 years old and finds long flights difficult.

Tech observer Richard Worzel of Toronto was skeptical the device - with a fee of roughly $2,000 in Canada and the U.S. and $4,000 in England - would be worth it to a publisher promoting a new artist.

"Something like this, you'd have to show quite a lot of demand," said Worzel.

Still, he could see the potential.

"If you're having a film festival and Julia Roberts can't come...but she's willing to help promote the movie by signing autographs, great idea. She can stay in Hollywood and people here in Toronto can talk to her and get her to sign an autograph and so on."

But its biggest selling-point could well be the green factor, said Worzel, noting that a celebrity-driven campaign to reduce carbon emissions could find the LongPen some adherents.

The LongPen's makers say the device has already saved more than 40 tonnes of carbon emissions by cutting down on celebrity jet-setting.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz and the Barenaked Ladies are just some of the big names who have helped make the phrase "carbon footprint" a household expression.

"(The LongPen) could be assisted by the public's desire to be carbon neutral," Worzel says. "Nobody wants to be seen as environmentally unfriendly."

Walsh says Atwood is surprised by the possibilities that have emerged since she came up with the LongPen several years ago to help her cut down on travel.

Her company has also been looking for ways to position the LongPen in businesses like banking or real estate, says Walsh.

"A lot of different sectors are getting to see what it is that the LongPen can deliver and are extremely excited about it," Walsh says.

"It's way more than what Margaret Atwood thought when she started."



*************

The story is posted here:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/070815/technology/technology_bc_cyberfile_longpen

Monday, August 13, 2007

New Building

We have just moved into a new building four times the size of our previous location and we will be unpacking for quite awhile yet.

Here are some pictures.







Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Projects at Clemson

From Dr. Timothy Berg at Clemson:

"I thought you might like to see what our students did with your products and the code you sent us last Fall to talk to a WINCON process. They used a video camera to find a ball with a camera and send the coordinates of the ball (where we used your code) to the control program which was responsible for controlling two servo motors and navigating the ball through the maze.
The students designed and built all the software and hardware.

Five teams built projects and competed, their webpages are at:
http://www.ces.clemson.edu/ece/crb/ece496/groupwebs07.htm

The best video is at:
http://people.clemson.edu/~aboucha/#a10
where you can click on the "Media" link and then download the video called "First Documented Success" (I think you will have to download to your pc to watch).

Just thought you would like some feedback on the help you gave us. It worked out very well."

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Start

We here at Quanser, our customers, and our partners are now involved in many projects that would be useful to communicate to the public, and have the ability to search. We will be updating this page so check back regularly...