One-legged locomotion with a compliant passive joint

There is an increasing attention of exploiting compliant materials for the purpose of legged locomotion, because they provide significant advantages in locomotion performance with respect to energy efficiency and stability. Toward establishing a fundamental basis for this line of research, a minimalistic locomotion model of a single legged system is explored in this paper. By analyzing the dynamic behavior of the system in simulation and a physical robotic platform, it is shown that a stable locomotion process can be achieved without the necessity of sensory feedback. In addition, further analysis characterizes the relation between motor control and the natural body dynamics determined by morphological properties such as body mass and spring constant. © 2006 The authors.

High efficiency operation of butt joint line-defect-waveguide microlaser in two-dimensional photonic crystal slab

Butt joint line-defect-waveguide microlasers are demonstrated on photonic crystal slabs with airholes in a triangular lattice. Such microlaser is designed to increase the output power from the waveguide edge directly. The output power is remarkably enhanced to 214 times higher by introducing chirped structure in the output waveguide. The lasing mode operates in the linear dispersion region of the output waveguide so that the absorption loss due to the band-edge effect is reduced. The laser resonance is illustrated theoretically using the finite difference time domain method. A practical high power efficiency of 20% is obtained in this microlaser. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.

A novel butt-joint scheme for the preparation of electro-absorptive lasers

A 1.55 mu m InGaAsP/InGaAsP multiple-quantum-well electro-absorption modulator (EAM) monolithically integrated with a distributed feedback laser (DFB) diode has been realized based on a novel butt-joint scheme by ultra-low metal-organic vapour phase epitaxy for the first time. The threshold current of 25 mA and an extinction ratio of more than 30 dB are obtained by using the novel structure. The beam divergence angles at the horizontal and vertical directions are as small as 19.3 degrees x 13 degrees, respectively, without a spot-size converter by undercutting the InGaAsP active region. The capacitance of the ridge waveguide device with a deep mesa buried by polyimide was reduced down to 0.30 pF.

Butt-Joint Monolithicaily Integrated DFB-LD/EA-MD Light Source for 10Gbit/s Transmission

This paper reports on the design, fabrication, and performance of an integrated electro-absorptive modulated laser based on butt-joint configuration for 10Gbit/s application. This paper mainly aims at two aspects. One is to improve the optical coupling between the laser and modulator; another is to increase the bandwidth of such devices by reducing the capacitance parameter of the modulator. The integrated devices exhibit high static and dynamic characteristics. Typical threshold current is 15mA,with some value as low as 8mA. Output power at 100mA is more than 10mW. The extinction characteristics,modulation bandwidth, and electrical return loss are measured. 3dB bandwidth more than 10GHz is monitored.

Integrated electroabsorption-modulated DFB laser by using an improved butt-joint method

An improved butt coupling method is used to fabricate an electroabsorption modulator (EAM) monolithically integrated with a distributed feedback (DFB) laser. The obtained electroabsorption-modulated laser (EML) chip with the traditional shallow ridge exhibits very low threshold current of 12 mA, output power of more than 8 mW, and static extinction ratio of -7 dB at the applied bias voltage from 0.5 to -2.0 V.

Improved digital processing method used for image motion measurement based on hybrid opto-digital joint transform correlator

Hybrid opto-digital joint transform correlator (HODJTC) is effective for image motion measurement, but it is different from the traditional joint transform correlator because it only has one optical transform and the joint power spectrum is directly input into a digital processing unit to compute the image shift. The local cross-correlation image can be directly obtained by adopting a local Fourier transform operator. After the pixel-level location of cross-correlation peak is initially obtained, the up-sampling technique is introduced to relocate the peak in even higher accuracy. With signal-to-noise ratio >= 20 dB, up-sampling factor k >= 10 and the maximum image shift <= 60 pixels, the root-mean-square error of motion measurement accuracy can be controlled below 0.05 pixels.

Capillary electrophoresis coupled with electrochemiluminescence detection using porous etched joint

A new setup to couple capillary electrophoresis (CE) with electrochemiluminescence (ECL) detection is described in which the electrical connection of CE is achieved through a porous section at a distance of 7 mm from the CE capillary outlet. Because the porous capillary wall allowed the CE current to pass through and there was no electric field gradient beyond that section, the influence of CE high-voltage field on the ECL procedure was eliminated. The porous section formed by etching the capillary with hydrofluoric acid after only one side of the circumference of 2-3 mm of polyimide coating of the capillary was removed, while keeping the polyimide coating on the other part to protect the capillary from HF etching makes the capillary joint much more robust since only a part of the circumference of it is etched. A standard three-electrode configuration was used in experiments with Pt wire as a counter electrode, Ag/AgCl as a reference electrode, and a 300-mum diameter Pt disk as a working electrode. Compared with CE-ECL conventional decoupler designs, the present setup with a porous joint has no added dead volume created.

Short-capillary electrophoresis with electrochemiluminescence detection using porous etched joint for fast analysis of lidocaine and ofloxacin

Fast analysis of ofloxacin and lidocaine, as bactericide and analgesic or anesthetics, is of clinic importance for understanding the patient's medical process. This paper presented a high throughput, simple analysis method of lidocaine and ofloxacin by capillary electrophoresis coupled with electrochemiluminescence (ECL) using porous etched joint. To shorten the analysis time and to improve the analytical performance, a capillary with 10 cm in length was used as the separation channel. The cyclic voltammograms of Ru(bpy)(3)(2+) with different capillary length at same field strength showed that the porous etched joint eliminated the effect of electrophoretic current on the ECL detection. Following micro total analysis systems (muTAS), some advantages of which this approach has, the fabrication of channel in chip was not needed. Compared with capillary electrophoresis with 40-cm-long capillary, the high sample throughput and low zone broadening may be the main advantage of the present system. Under optimal condition, the detection limits of lidocaine and ofloxacin based on peak height were 3.0 x 10(-8) and 5.0 x 10(-7) mot L-1 and a 60 h(-1) of sampling frequency was obtained.

Joint statistical distribution of two-point sea surface elevations in finite water depth

Based on the second-order random wave solutions of water wave equations in finite water depth, a joint statistical distribution of two-point sea surface elevations is derived by using the characteristic function expansion method. It is found that the joint distribution depends on five parameters. These five parameters can all be determined by the water depth, the relative position of two points and the wave-number spectrum of ocean waves. As an illustrative example, for fully developed wind-generated sea, the parameters that appeared in the joint distribution are calculated for various wind speeds, water depths and relative positions of two points by using the Donelan and Pierson spectrum and the nonlinear effects of sea waves on the joint distribution are studied. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Variation in joint mode of the tropical Indian-Pacific Ocean thermodynamic anomaly

Previous research has defined the index of the Indian-Pacific thermodynamic anomaly joint mode (IPTAJM) and suggested that the winter IPTAJM has an important impact on summer rainfall over China. However, the possible causes for the interannual and decadal variability of the IPTAJM are still unclear. Therefore, this work investigates zonal displacements of both the western Pacific warm pool (WPWP) and the eastern Indian Ocean warm pool (EIOWP). The relationships between the WPWP and the EIOWP and the IPTAJM are each examined, and then the impacts of the zonal wind anomalies over the equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans on the IPTAJM are studied. The WPWP eastern edge anomaly displays significant interannual and decadal variability and experienced a regime shift in about 1976 and 1998, whereas the EIOWP western edge exhibits only distinct interannual variability. The decadal variability of the IPTAJM may be mainly caused by both the zonal migration of the WPWP and the 850 hPa zonal wind anomaly over the central equatorial Pacific. On the other hand, the zonal migrations of both the WPWP and the EIOWP and the zonal wind anomalies over the central equatorial Pacific and the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean may be all responsible for the interannual variability of the IPTAJM.