University of Electro-Communications

About: University of Electro-Communications is a education organization based out in Tokyo, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Laser & Robot. The organization has 8041 authors who have published 16950 publications receiving 235832 citations. The organization is also known as: UEC & Denki-Tsūshin Daigaku.

FoodCam: A real-time food recognition system on a smartphone

Abstract: We propose a mobile food recognition system, FoodCam, the purposes of which are estimating calorie and nutrition of foods and recording a user's eating habits. In this paper, we propose image recognition methods which are suitable for mobile devices. The proposed method enables real-time food image recognition on a consumer smartphone. This characteristic is completely different from the existing systems which require to send images to an image recognition server. To recognize food items, a user draws bounding boxes by touching the screen first, and then the system starts food item recognition within the indicated bounding boxes. To recognize them more accurately, we segment each food item region by GrubCut, extract image features and finally classify it into one of the one hundred food categories with a linear SVM. As image features, we adopt two kinds of features: one is the combination of the standard bag-of-features and color histograms with ?2 kernel feature maps, and the other is a HOG patch descriptor and a color patch descriptor with the state-of-the-art Fisher Vector representation. In addition, the system estimates the direction of food regions where the higher SVM output score is expected to be obtained, and it shows the estimated direction in an arrow on the screen in order to ask a user to move a smartphone camera. This recognition process is performed repeatedly and continuously. We implemented this system as a standalone mobile application for Android smartphones so as to use multiple CPU cores effectively for real-time recognition. In the experiments, we have achieved the 79.2 % classification rate for the top 5 category candidates for a 100-category food dataset with the ground-truth bounding boxes when we used HOG and color patches with the Fisher Vector coding as image features. In addition, we obtained positive evaluation by a user study compared to the food recording system without object recognition.

Middle latitude LF (40 kHz) phase variations associated with earthquakes for quiet and disturbed geomagnetic conditions

Abstract: The phase (P) and amplitude (A) anomalies in subionospheric LF signal (40 kHz) along the path Japan–Kamchatka of 2300 km have been studied for the data observed by means of a digital OminiPAL receiver for 2 years. The empirical model of background P and A daily variations for quiet and disturbed geomagnetic conditions in the absence of seismic activity is developed. We pay special attention to the P and A features during large magnetic storms. A sensitivity threshold of LF signal to deforming influence of the geomagnetic and seismic factors is defined. Two cases of bay-like behavior of LF phase and amplitude in nighttime are described as a clear earthquake precursor of LF signal. We have found from the statistical study that LF signal effect is observed only for earthquakes with M⩾5.5 and we discuss the possible mechanisms of the effect.

SmartTouch: electric skin to touch the untouchable

Abstract: Augmented haptics lets users touch surface information of any modality. SmartTouch uses optical sensors to gather information and electrical stimulation to translate it into tactile display. Augmented reality is an engineer's approach to this dream. In AR, sensors capture artificial information from the world, and existing sensing channels display it. Hence, we virtually acquire the sensor's physical ability as our own. Augmented haptics, the result of applying AR to haptics, would allow a person to touch the untouchable. Our system, SmartTouch, uses a tactile display and a sensor. When the sensor contacts an object, an electrical stimulation translates the acquired information into a tactile sensation, such as a vibration or pressure, through the tactile display. Thus, an individual not only makes physical contact with an object, but also touches the surface information of any modality, even those that are typically untouchable.

Electrochemical Er doping of porous silicon and its room‐temperature luminescence at ∼1.54 μm

Abstract: We present a new electro‐chemical method for incorporating high concentration Er ions deep into porous silicon layers and its intense photoluminescence at ∼1.54 μm at room temperature. Porous silicon layers prepared by anodic etching of p‐type silicon substrates in HF/H2O are immersed in ErCl3/ethanol solution. Then the negative bias relative to a counter platinum electrode is applied to the samples. Er3+ ions are drawn into fine pores of the porous silicon layers by the electric field. After thermal annealing at ∼1300 °C in an O2/Ar atmosphere, the samples show sharp and intense Er3+‐related photoluminescence at ∼1.54 μm at room temperature upon excitation with an Ar ion laser.