Recent Patents on Engineering - Volume 16, Issue 4, 2022

Background: Concrete pavers are self-propelled units used in concrete pavement construction that have of paving, vibrating, and leveling functions. The existing concrete pavers have a large size, making it difficult for them to enter underground roadways, and it is difficult to adjust the paving equipment in real time when the width of the underground roadway is deformed. Objective: To realize intelligent concrete paving in coal mine roadways, based on the analysis of recent concrete paver patents, this paper proposes an intelligent virtual paving system based on 3D infrared scanning imaging. Methods: The intelligent virtual paving system, which uses multiple groups of 3D infrared scanners and signal processing systems, can collect and analyze 3D images in the roadway and perform virtual paving in the computer. This system can obtain the required parameters of roadway paving, such as the feeding amount, driving speed, limiter height, and width of the synovium, as well as give the initial paving parameters. Results: In the actual paving process, through virtual paving parameters, the feeding amount and accelerator can be regulated in real time, and the difference between the actual paving and virtual paving can be judged to change the paving width in real time. Conclusion: Intelligent virtual paver systems have a guiding significance for the improvement of existing paver systems.

Background: Today, living standards and medical technology are improving, and the aging global population is increasing. However, more and more older adults are suffering from knee diseases. This will seriously affect patients’ daily life and their mental state. In many studies, repetitive physical exercises and motor activities in real-world environments have been shown to help improve knee muscle strength and restore damaged nerves. Therefore, physical knee therapy is very necessary. The use of rehabilitation training devices for movement therapy has shown great potential. Objective: This study aimed at exploring the structural features, functions, and development status of the knee rehabilitation training device. Methods: This review explores the structure and function of various current knee rehabilitation devices based on structural and kinematic properties of the knee joint in relation to requirements of physical knee rehabilitation. This paper aims to present a systematic guideline and outline a reference for future designers of rehabilitation devices. Results: By analyzing the structure and movement of the knee joint and combining the strategies of physical knee rehabilitation, movement requirements during knee rehabilitation training are concluded. According to the structure, drive form, transmission mode, and rehabilitation environment of knee rehabilitation devices, the devices are classified and compared; some typical features are summarized; some current problems are analyzed, and the future trends and development directions of rehabilitation devices are discussed. Conclusion: Current rehabilitation equipment has a variety of structures and functions, but a good balance between weight and volume is hardly maintained. The protection of the body needs to be further improved. Many knee rehabilitation devices are only concepts, not physical objects, and lack clinical trial data. Power sources and drives are large and heavy, which can compress the knee joint and burden the patient. Strong and lightweight materials should be chosen to assist knee rehabilitation. It will be a good development in the future.

Background: China is a big country with a vast territory, in which gastropathy has become a common high-incidence disease in daily life. Gastroscopy is an important means of diagnosis of gastropathy, but the use of a gastroscope causes a lot of pain to patients. A cable-free, non-invasive and painless diagnosis and treatment tool, an active capsule endoscope robot, can solve this problem very well. Capsule robot has become a new development hotspot. Objective: The study aims to provide an overview of the active endoscope capsule robot and introduce its classification, characteristics and development. Methods: This paper summarizes various scientific research achievements of the active endoscope capsule robot. The structural characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of various active endoscope capsule robots are introduced. Results: The active endoscope capsule robot has been analyzed and compared to other models. Its typical characteristics have been summarized. The main problems in its development are analyzed, its development trend is prospected, and the research status and future of active endoscope capsule robot are discussed. Conclusion: The active capsule robot is classified into two categories: bionic and non-bionic. The analysis shows that the capsule robot is an effective and safe initiative and has a very broad application prospect for various gastrointestinal tests compared to gastroscope, and helps alleviate the pain of patients.

Background: Methods of subdivision surfaces modeling and related technology research have become a hot spot in the field of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Graphics (CG). In the early stage, research on subdivision curves and surfaces mainly focused on the relationship between the points, thereby failing to satisfy the requirements of all geometric modeling. Considering many geometric constraints is necessary to construct subdivision curves and surfaces for achieving high-quality geometric modeling. Objective: This paper aims to summarize various subdivision schemes of subdivision curves and surfaces, particularly in geometric constraints, such as points and normals. The findings help scholars to grasp the current research status of subdivision curves and surfaces better and explore their applications in geometric modeling. Methods: This paper reviews the theory and applications of subdivision schemes from four aspects. We first discuss the background and key concept of subdivision schemes and then summarize the classification of classical subdivision schemes. Next, we review the subdivision surfaces fitting and summarize new subdivision schemes under geometric constraints. Applications of subdivision surfaces are also discussed. Finally, this paper provides a brief summary and future application prospects. Results: Many research papers and patents on subdivision schemes are classified in this review paper. Remarkable developments and improvements have been achieved in analytical computations and practical applications. Conclusion: Our review shows that subdivision curves and surfaces are widely used in geometric modeling. However, some topics need to be further studied. New subdivision schemes need to be presented to meet the requirements of new practical applications.

Background: Bearing testing machine is the key equipment for bearing design, theoretical research and improvement, and it plays an important role in the performance of bearing life, fatigue, vibration and working temperature. With the requirements of aerospace, military equipment, automobile manufacturing and other industrial fields of the bearing are becoming higher and higher. There is an urgent need for high-precision and high-efficiency bearing testing machines to monitor and analyze the performance of bearings. Objective: By analyzing the recent patents, the characteristics and existing problems of the current bearing testing machine are summarized to provide references for the development of bearing test equipment in the future. Methods: This paper reviews various representative patents related to the third generation bearing testing machines. Results: Although the structure of bearing testing machines is different, the main problems in the structure and design principle of bearing testing machine have been summarized and analyzed, and the development of trend and direction of the future bearing testing machine have been discussed. Conclusion: Bearing testing machines for health monitoring of bearing life cycle is of great significance. The current bearing testing machine has basically achieved the monitoring and analysis However, due to the emergence of new types of bearings, further improvement is still needed. With the development of testing technology towards intelligent and big data-driven direction, bearing testing machine is moving towards the type of cloud computing and large-scale testing.

Background: The medical endoscope is a major functional component of medical equipment that has become the focus of study around the world. Objective: By comparing and discussing the patents of the medical endoscope, some valuable conclusions have been drawn to predict the future research and development of the medical endoscope. Methods: By analyzing the patent features of the medical endoscope in the mechanical structure, image display, and endoscope system, the function of the medical endoscope on the detection of human internal tissues has been explained. In combination with the key technology of the medical endoscope, related patents have been studied. Results: With the rapid development of technology in the medical industry and the need for practical applications, there is an increase in the requirements for medical endoscopes. Medical endoscopes have undergone a lot of innovations in mechanical structure, imaging, and endoscopic systems. By comparing the characteristics of various patents of medical endoscopes, the main problems of current medical endoscopes, such as complicated structure and poor lighting imaging effect, are analyzed and summarized. The further development trend of medical endoscopes has also been discussed. Conclusion: By improving and optimizing the mechanical structure of the medical endoscope, the lighting method, and the three directions of the system, the performance of the medical endoscope can be improved, and the loopholes in the current technology can be solved. Moreover, it will be more practical.

Background: Fruit harvesting operation is an important part of the whole process of fruit production. As a key component of the harvesting machine, the performance of the collection device directly affects the harvesting efficiency and the quality of the collected fruits. Obtaining betterperforming collection devices and more efficient collection methods is the direction of research development in this field. Objective: By analyzing and discussing the patents of mechanically assisted harvesting machines, mechanized harvesting machines and harvesting robots collection devices, we have summarized their development trends and provided references for the development of harvesting collection devices. Methods: An overview has been provided of the various patents currently available relating to mechanically assisted harvesters, mechanized harvesters and harvesting robotic collection devices. The advantages and disadvantages of collection methods and devices are presented. The results of the study have also been combined with patent analysis. Results: Through the summary of a large number of harvesting machine collection device patents, their characteristics are analyzed. Further trends in the development of harvesting machine collection devices are also discussed. Conclusion: The in-depth research on various types of harvesting machine collection devices is helpful to solve the problems of safety hazards, low harvesting efficiency, large fruit injury, unreasonable size of collection devices and unreasonable matching of human-machine relationship.

Background: Instant access to desired information is the key element for building an intelligent environment creating value for people and steering towards society 5.0. Online newspapers are one such example which provide instant access to information anywhere and anytime on our mobiles, tablets, laptops, desktops, etc. But when it comes to searching for a specific advertisement in newspapers, online newspapers do not provide easy advertisement search options. Also, there are no specialized search portals which can provide for keyword-based advertisement search across multiple online newspapers. As a result, to find a specific advertisement in multiple newspapers, a sequential manual search is required across a range of online newspapers. Objective: This research paper proposes a keyword-based advertisement search framework to provide an instant access to the relevant advertisements from online English newspapers in a category of reader’s choice. Methods: First, an image extraction algorithm is proposed which can identify and extract the images from online newspapers without using any rules on advertisement placement and/or size. It is followed by a proposed deep learning Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model named ‘Adv_Recognizer’ which is used to separate the advertisement images from non-advertisement images. Another CNN Model, ‘Adv_Classifier’, is proposed, which classifies the advertisement images into four pre-defined categories. Finally, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technique is used to perform keyword-based advertisement searches in various categories across multiple newspapers. Results: The proposed image extraction algorithm can easily extract all types of well-bounded images from different online newspapers and this algorithm is used to create ‘English newspaper image dataset’ of 11,000 images, including advertisements and non-advertisements. The proposed ‘Adv_Recognizer’ model separates advertisement and non-advertisement images with an accuracy of around 97.8%. and the proposed ‘Adv_Classifier’ model classifies the advertisements in four predefined categories exhibiting an accuracy of around 73.5%. Conclusion: The proposed framework will help newspaper readers in performing exhaustive advertisement searches across a range of online English newspapers in a category of their own interest. It will also help in carrying out advertisement analysis and studies.