Patents Examined by Tejal J Gami
  • Patent number: 7783369
    Abstract: A remote maintenance system 1 is provided with a linear motor apparatus 2, a motor driver 3 for controlling a motor of the linear motion apparatus 2, and a user terminal 4. The motor driver 3 includes a memory which stores parameters relating to motor control. The user terminal 4 acquires the parameters from the motor driver 3, and sends the parameters to a maintenance server 5. Then, the user terminal 4 receives the parameters adjusted by the maintenance servers from the maintenance server 5, and writes the parameter into the memory of the motor driver 3. Thus, the parameters of the linear motion apparatus can be adjusted from remote locations at a high precision.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 24, 2005
    Date of Patent: August 24, 2010
    Assignee: THK Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Kazuo Shoda, Yuki Nomura, Yoshifumi Nagato
  • Patent number: 7778715
    Abstract: In at least some embodiments, a method comprises obtaining a state description associated with a system having a component. The method further comprises automatically obtaining a substantially optimal parameterization for the component based on one or more operant characteristics of the component predicted by a behavior prediction model using combinations of the system's state description and a set of possible parameterizations for the component.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2005
    Date of Patent: August 17, 2010
    Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company
    Inventors: Evan Kirshenbaum, Dirk M. Beyer, Henri J. Suermondt
  • Patent number: 7778734
    Abstract: A household energy management system uses measurements of the household electricity supply to identify and to determine the energy consumption of individual household appliances. From these measurements, models can be built of the behaviour of the occupants of the house, the thermal properties of the house and the efficiency of the appliances. Using the models, the household appliances—in particular heating and cooling appliances—can be controlled to optimize energy efficiency; and maintenance programmes for the appliances and for the house itself can be recommended to the householder or arranged with a service company.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 26, 2004
    Date of Patent: August 17, 2010
    Inventors: James Ian Oswald, Stephen John Tamsett
  • Patent number: 7774778
    Abstract: A device control apparatus has a state processing task section 101 for determining an operation state of a device among a plurality of operation states of the device; a sequence processing task section 107 for running a processing program among a plurality of processing programs, and a task connecting section 111 for selecting the sequence processing program corresponding to the operation state of the device determined by the state processing task section to activate the sequence processing task section 107. In this arrangement, the sequence processing program can be easily written without considering an internal state transition processing, and the internal state transition processing and the sequence processing program can be freely designed without the need of modifying the sequence processing program due to change of the internal state transition processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 16, 2005
    Date of Patent: August 10, 2010
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Yutaka Fujihara, Shusuke Haruna, Hirokazu Yamamoto, Takeshi Makiyori, Sumio Kurose, Takuya Nomura, Yasushi Tamakoshi
  • Patent number: 7774089
    Abstract: A motor control host includes a plurality of ports, a memory, and a processing device. The memory is operable to store an enable mask defining an enablement state for each of the ports. The processing device is operable to send a first message over those selected ports having an affirmative enablement state to maintain a communication link over the selected ports and inhibit the first message for those ports having a negative enablement state. A method for configuring a motor control system including a motor control host having a plurality of ports includes storing an enable mask defining an enablement state for each of the ports. A first message is sent over those selected ports having an affirmative enablement state to maintain a communication link over the selected ports. The first message is inhibited for those ports having a negative enablement state.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 18, 2005
    Date of Patent: August 10, 2010
    Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: James S. Rustad, Scott D. Braun, Neil W. Knutsen, Gregory W. Mears, John H. Stuedemann, James B. Vitrano
  • Patent number: 7769475
    Abstract: An automatic introduction apparatus for automatically introducing a target celestial object by controlling a rotation of an astronomical telescope around at least two axes comprises: an image-capturing means capable of capturing an image of a celestial object at a plurality of focal distances; a celestial object database; an image processing section for extracting a set of information of each celestial object from the image of celestial object captured by the image-capturing means; and a celestial object identification means for identifying the celestial object whose image has been captured, by comparing the information of each celestial object extracted by the image processing sections with the celestial object information stored in the celestial object database.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 31, 2004
    Date of Patent: August 3, 2010
    Assignee: Vixen Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Norimasa Fujimoto, Mitsuaki Hirono
  • Patent number: 7765248
    Abstract: A service provider apparatus is provided with a first application for executing a process related to a Web page or Web contents, and a service providing part for providing services. The first application sends a request to a second application included in another apparatus. The service providing part receives a service providing request related to the request from the second application, and provides a service depending on the service providing request, so as to expand functions of the services provided by the service provider apparatus.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 24, 2005
    Date of Patent: July 27, 2010
    Assignee: Ricoh Company, Ltd.
    Inventor: Katsumi Kanasaki
  • Patent number: 7761173
    Abstract: A method to provide feedback to an operator of a device having feedback delay. The method includes the steps of displaying a first image of a view from the device, the device being at a first position, issuing a movement command to cause a desired movement of the device to a second position, and displaying a second image of a predicted view from the device at the second position prior to the operator receiving real feedback of the movement command.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 25, 2004
    Date of Patent: July 20, 2010
    Assignee: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.
    Inventor: Avshalom Ehrlich
  • Patent number: 7739216
    Abstract: A computer-implemented method of managing a machinery monitoring system is provided. The method includes relating an asset output to at least one asset input, generating at least one rule based on the relation, selecting at least one of live asset data, historical asset data, user-supplied asset data, and third party supplied asset data to test the at least one rule, testing the at least one rule incrementally using the selected asset data, and monitoring the output of the at least one rule at each increment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 22, 2004
    Date of Patent: June 15, 2010
    Assignee: General Electric Company
    Inventors: Alan Thomas Schachtely, John Wesley Grant, Richard Lewis Gomer, Bradley Ted Kelly, Chad Eric Knodle, Patrick Louis Pfrehm, James Joseph Schmid
  • Patent number: 7725199
    Abstract: A control framework generates control parameters for controlling operation of a physical system, and includes one or more embedded models each producing a model output corresponding to a different operating parameter of the system as a function of one or more system operating conditions and/or a number of solution parameters, objective logic producing a scalar performance metric as a function of the number model outputs and of one or more system performance target values, objective optimization logic determining a number of unconstrained solution parameters in a manner that minimizes the scalar performance metric, and solution constraining logic determining the number of solution parameters from the number of unconstrained solution parameters in a manner that limits an operating range of at least one of the unconstrained solution parameters. The control parameters may correspond to one of the number of unconstrained solution parameters or to the number of solution parameters.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 2, 2005
    Date of Patent: May 25, 2010
    Assignee: Cummins Inc.
    Inventor: Larry J. Brackney
  • Patent number: 7715928
    Abstract: Techniques and sensor networks based on distributed wavelet transform algorithms for efficient sensor networks. Wireless multihop sensor networks can implement the described techniques to exploit the data flow direction in the network to perform partial computations to approximate the wavelet coefficients using the available data that arrives at each sensor. Non-multihop sensor networks may use inter-sensor communications and the distributed wavelet transform algorithms to decorrelate the data and thus improve the energy efficiency.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 2005
    Date of Patent: May 11, 2010
    Assignee: University of Southern California
    Inventors: Alexandre Ciancio, Antonio Ortega
  • Patent number: 7715932
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling safety-critical processes, such as the monitoring of protective doors, emergency stop switches, light curtains and the like. A control unit is connected to a plurality of I/O units via a data transmission link. The I/O units transmit process data to the control unit, with the process data being protected against transmission errors by means of a diversitary multiple transmission. The process data are encoded using a variable keyword in order to generate variably encoded process data. The variably encoded process data are transmitted to the control unit as part of the diversitary multiple transmission.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 19, 2005
    Date of Patent: May 11, 2010
    Assignee: Pilz GmbH & Co.
    Inventor: Dietmar Seizinger
  • Patent number: 7707458
    Abstract: An electronic system comprising a system to be monitored (2) and a plurality of fault-monitoring systems (4, 6) each of which is adapted to output a fault signal when an input indicates that the electronic system is in a fault condition associated with the fault-monitoring system. The fault-monitoring systems are arranged in a cascade fashion such that a fault signal output from one fault-monitoring system (4) is provided as an input to a subsequent fault-monitoring system (6) in the cascade of fault-monitoring systems to simulate a fault condition associated with the subsequent fault-monitoring system. The output of the final fault-monitoring system in the cascade gives an indication of whether there is a fault with any of the fault-monitoring systems.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 18, 2003
    Date of Patent: April 27, 2010
    Assignee: Ricardo UK Limited
    Inventors: Peter John Miller, Andrew Charles Osborne Smith, Michael John Lindsey