Toyota

About: Toyota is a company organization based out in Safenwil, Switzerland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Internal combustion engine & Exhaust gas. The organization has 40032 authors who have published 55003 publications receiving 735317 citations. The organization is also known as: Toyota Motor Corporation & Toyota Jidosha KK.

Tracking via Robust Multi-task Multi-view Joint Sparse Representation

Abstract: Combining multiple observation views has proven beneficial for tracking. In this paper, we cast tracking as a novel multi-task multi-view sparse learning problem and exploit the cues from multiple views including various types of visual features, such as intensity, color, and edge, where each feature observation can be sparsely represented by a linear combination of atoms from an adaptive feature dictionary. The proposed method is integrated in a particle filter framework where every view in each particle is regarded as an individual task. We jointly consider the underlying relationship between tasks across different views and different particles, and tackle it in a unified robust multi-task formulation. In addition, to capture the frequently emerging outlier tasks, we decompose the representation matrix to two collaborative components which enable a more robust and accurate approximation. We show that the proposed formulation can be efficiently solved using the Accelerated Proximal Gradient method with a small number of closed-form updates. The presented tracker is implemented using four types of features and is tested on numerous benchmark video sequences. Both the qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed approach compared to several state-of-the-art trackers.

Bending of poly(vinyl alcohol)-poly(sodium acrylate) composite hydrogel in electric fields

Abstract: Bending of poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogel mixed with poly(sodium acrylate) chains, PVA–PAA gel, under the influence of dc electric fields was studied. The PVA–PAA gel was prepared by repeatedly freezing and thawing a mixture of PVA and polyacrylic acid aqueous solutions. The PVA–PAA gel was a hydrogel with the PAA chains, which were entangled with the PVA polymer network and were fixed in the gel. The PVA–PAA gel bent toward the negative electrode in electrolyte solutions under dc electric fields as did the polyelectrolyte gel with negatively charged polyions. The PVA gel, free of PAA, was insensitive to dc electric fields. The deflection of the bending and the bending speed were influenced by the filed intensity, the concentration of the polyion in the gel, and the thickness of the gel. The bending of the PVA–PAA gel was qualitatively explained by a bending theory of polyelectrolyte gel, based upon the change of the osmotic pressure due to the ion concentration difference between the inside and the outside of the gel.

A Computer Simulation Study of the Mesoscopic Structure of the Polyelectrolyte Membrane Nafion

Abstract: We studied the mesoscopic structure of the perfluorinated sulfonic acid membrane Nafion containing water using a dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation. A Nafion polymer is modeled by connecting coarse-grained particles, which correspond to the hydrophobic backbone of polytetrafluoroethylene and perfluorinated side chains terminated by hydrophilic end particles of sulfonic acid groups. Water is also modeled by the same size particle as adopted in the Nafion model, corresponding to a group of four H2O molecules. The Flory–Huggins χ-parameters between DPD particles are estimated from the mixing energy calculation using an atomistic simulation. In the DPD simulation, water particles and hydrophilic particles of Nafion side chains spontaneously form aggregates and are embedded in the hydrophobic phase of the Nafion backbone. This structure is a bicontinuous phase of Nafion and water regions and has a continuous path in the cavity of water in any direction. Although this sponge-like structure is essentially identical to the cluster-network model proposed from the experimental studies, the shape of the water clusters is not spherical but irregular, and the water regions are indistinguishable structures of water clusters and their channels. The cluster size and its dependence on the water content are in good agreement with experimental reports; therefore, the simulated mesoscopic structure is confirmed to be a highly possible one.

Efficient production of L-Lactic acid by metabolically engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae with a genome-integrated L-lactate dehydrogenase gene.

Abstract: We developed a metabolically engineered yeast which produces lactic acid efficiently. In this recombinant strain, the coding region for pyruvate decarboxylase 1 (PDC1) on chromosome XII is substituted for that of the l-lactate dehydrogenase gene (LDH) through homologous recombination. The expression of mRNA for the genome-integrated LDH is regulated under the control of the native PDC1 promoter, while PDC1 is completely disrupted. Using this method, we constructed a diploid yeast transformant, with each haploid genome having a single insertion of bovine LDH. Yeast cells expressing LDH were observed to convert glucose to both lactate (55.6 g/liter) and ethanol (16.9 g/liter), with up to 62.2% of the glucose being transformed into lactic acid under neutralizing conditions. This transgenic strain, which expresses bovine LDH under the control of the PDC1 promoter, also showed high lactic acid production (50.2 g/liter) under nonneutralizing conditions. The differences in lactic acid production were compared among four different recombinants expressing a heterologous LDH gene (i.e., either the bovine LDH gene or the Bifidobacterium longum LDH gene): two transgenic strains with 2μm plasmid-based vectors and two genome-integrated strains.

Slip control apparatus for motor vehicle lock-up clutch

Abstract: An apparatus for controlling a lock-up clutch between pump and turbine impellers in a fluid-filled power transmitting device of a motor vehicle, such that a slip control device controls the actual slip speed of the lock-up clutch so as to coincide with a transient target slip speed, the apparatus including a device for calculating a final target slip speed of the lock-up clutch which assures a maximum fuel economy of the vehicle during a steady-state running, a device for setting, as an initial value of the transient target slip speed, a difference between the speeds of the pump and turbine impellers immediately before an operation of the slip control device is initiated, and a device for reducing the transient target slip speed toward the final target slip speed at a rate which decreases as the transient target slip speed approaches the final target slip speed.