A lower-limb exoskeleton robot identifies the wearer′s walking intention and assists the walking movement through mechanical force; thus, it is important to be able to identify the wearer′s movement in real-time. Measurement of the angle of the knee and ankle can be difficult in the case of patients who cannot move the lower-limb joint properly. Therefore, in this study, the knee angle as well as the angles of the talocrural and subtalar joints of the ankle were estimated during walking by applying the neural network to two inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors attached to the thigh and shank. First, for angle estimation, the gyroscope and accelerometer data of the IMU sensor were obtained while walking at a treadmill speed of 1 to 2.5 km/h while wearing an exoskeleton robot. The weights according to each walking speed were calculated using a neural network algorithm programmed in MATLAB software. Second, an appropriate weight was selected according to the walking speed through the IMU data, and the knee angle and the angles of the talocrural and subtalar joints of the ankle were estimated in real-time during walking through a feedforward neural network using the IMU data received in real-time. We confirmed that the angle estimation error was accurately estimated as 1.69° ± 1.43 (mean absolute error (MAE) ± standard deviation (SD)) for the knee joint, 1.29° ± 1.01 for the talocrural joint, and 0.82° ± 0.69 for the subtalar joint. Therefore, the proposed algorithm has potential for gait rehabilitation as it addresses the difficulty of estimating angles of lower extremity patients using torque and EMG sensors.

Surface defect detection in industrial environments is crucial for quality management and has significant research value. General detection networks, such as the YOLO series, have proven effective in various dataset detections. However, due to the complex and varied surface defects of industrial products, many defects occupy a small proportion of the surface and fall into the category of typical small target detection problems. Moreover, the complexity of general detection network architectures relies on high-tech hardware, making it difficult to deploy on devices without GPUs or on edge computing and mobile devices. To meet the practical needs of industrial product defect inspection applications, this paper proposes a lightweight network specifically designed for defect detection in industrial fields. This network is composed of four parts: a backbone network, a multiscale feature aggregation network, a residual enhancement network, and an attention enhancement network. The network includes a backbone network that integrates attention layers for feature extraction, a multiscale feature aggregation network for semantic information, a residual enhancement network for spatial focus, and an attention enhancement network for global–local feature interaction. These components enhance detection performance for diverse defects while maintaining low hardware requirements. Experimental results show that this network outperforms the latest and most popular YOLOv5n and YOLOv8n models in the five indicators P, R, F1, mAP@.5, and GFLOPS when used on four public datasets. It even approaches or surpasses the YOLOv8s and YOLOv5s models with several times the GFLOPS computation. It balances the requirements of lightweight real-time and accuracy in the scenario of industrial product surface defect detection.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition with a high mortality rate. Early prediction and treatment are the most effective strategies for increasing survival rates. This paper proposes a neural architecture search (NAS) model to predict the onset of sepsis with a low computational cost and high search performance by applying a genetic algorithm (GA). The proposed model shares the weights of all possible connection nodes internally within the neural network. Externally, the search cost is reduced through the weight-sharing effect between the genotypes of the GA. A predictive analysis was performed using the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III), a medical time-series dataset, with the primary objective of predicting sepsis onset 3 h before occurrence. In addition, experiments were conducted under various prediction times (0–12 h) for comparison. The proposed model exhibited an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) score of 0.94 (95% CI: 0.92–0.96) for 3 h, which is 0.31–0.26 higher than the scores obtained using the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA), quick SOFA (qSOFA), and Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II scoring systems. Furthermore, the proposed model exhibited a 12% improvement in the AUROC value over a simple model based on the long short-term memory neural network. Additionally, it is not only optimally searchable for sepsis onset prediction, but also outperforms conventional models that use similar predictive purposes and datasets. Notably, it is sufficiently robust to shape changes in the input data and has less structural dependence.

In a project-based ETO (Engineering-To-Order) industry, design, purchasing, production and quality processes are closely integrated to meet a delivery schedule, cost limitation and quality specification. When an engineering change occurs in a project execution stage, miscommunication of design change may generate a significant cost and delay. This paper suggests a model to capture a design change and share activities for processing change done by each stakeholder. The framework also captures ECR (Engineering Change Request), ECO (Engineering Change Order) and a relationship among them with a result of processes. The data could be used for analysing defects of each process, improving a design quality, and a plan for cost reduction. For capturing, sharing and monitoring every change of drawing element and BOM (Bill of Materials), the model extracts a drawing and BOM from a product structure of a 3D CAD (Computer-Aided Design) system. Extracted data are sent to PLM (Product Life-Cycle Management)/ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system for planning, purchasing, manufacturing and quality control processes.