Patents by Inventor Akira Nakamura

Akira Nakamura has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • METHOD OF CORRECTING FILM THICKNESS MEASUREMENT VALUE, FILM THICKNESS CORRECTOR AND EDDY CURRENT SENSOR
    Publication number: 20150262893
    Abstract: The polishing process includes a first state where an eddy current sensor and a polishing target object do not face each other and a second state where the eddy current sensor and the polishing target object face each other. The method of correcting a film thickness measurement value includes obtaining a first measurement signal (Xout, Yout) output from the eddy current sensor in the first state (step S108), computing a correction value (?X, ?Y) on the basis of the obtained first measurement signal and a reference signal (Xsd, Ysd) set in advance, obtaining a second measurement signal (X, Y) output from the eddy current sensor in the second state (step S104), and correcting the obtained second measurement signal on the basis of the computed correction value while the polishing process is being performed (step S105).
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 12, 2015
    Publication date: September 17, 2015
    Inventors: Akira NAKAMURA, Hiroaki SHIBUE, Yasumasa HIROO, Hiroshi OTA, Taro TAKAHASHI, Mitsuo TADA
  • REAR CONVERTER
    Publication number: 20150248050
    Abstract: There is provided rear converter including a first lens that is a negative lens of which both surfaces are concave, a second lens that is a negative lens of which both an image plane side and an object side are convex toward an object side, and a third lens that is a positive lens of which both sides are convex. The first to third lenses are disposed in this order from the object side, and the rear converter is inserted and used between an imaging lens and a camera.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 20, 2015
    Publication date: September 3, 2015
    Inventor: AKIRA NAKAMURA
  • BATTERY STATE CONTROL CIRCUIT, BATTERY STATE CONTROL DEVICE, AND BATTERY PACK
    Publication number: 20150236533
    Abstract: A battery state control circuit is provided for connection to multiple rechargeable batteries, the multiple batteries being connected in series, for connection to a primary coil connected in series to the multiple batteries, and for connection to multiple secondary coils to which electrical energy stored in the primary coil is transferred, the multiple secondary coils being connected in parallel to the multiple batteries, respectively. The battery state control circuit includes an adjustment unit to adjust the energy amount stored in the primary coil, in accordance with a state of at least one of the multiple batteries.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 13, 2015
    Publication date: August 20, 2015
    Applicant: RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
    Inventors: Norifumi Yamamoto, Akira Nakamura
  • Flange member, photosensitive drum, process cartridge, image forming apparatus, and image forming method
    Patent number: 9110438
    Abstract: A disclosed flange member includes a press-fitted portion to be press-fitted in an axial end-opening portion of a hollow and cylindrical sleeve member; an axle opening portion including an axle opening into which a shaft member is inserted when the press-fitted portion is press-fitted in the end-opening portion; and a linking portion extending in a direction parallel to a circular cross section of the sleeve member and connecting the axle opening portion to the press-fitted portion. The linking portion includes a stress-absorbing portion that is deformed so as to absorb stress to which an outer peripheral surface of the press-fitted portion is subjected upon contact with an inner peripheral surface of the sleeve member when the press-fitted portion is press-fitted in the end-opening portion, thus preventing the stress from being transmitted to the axle opening portion via the linking portion.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 10, 2011
    Date of Patent: August 18, 2015
    Assignee: RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
    Inventors: Daisuke Kubo, Keiichi Yano, Akira Nakamura, Yoko Arai
  • Polishing apparatus and polishing method
    Patent number: 9105516
    Abstract: A polishing apparatus includes: a polishing table for supporting a polishing pad; a substrate holder having a substrate holding surface and a pressure chamber formed by a flexible membrane, the substrate holder being configured to hold a substrate on the substrate holding surface and press the substrate against the polishing pad via pressure in the pressure chamber; a substrate separation assisting device configured to eject a fluid to a contact portion between the substrate and the flexible membrane so as to release the substrate from the substrate holding surface; and a vertically-moving mechanism configured to vertically move the substrate holder. The substrate holder is moved vertically in accordance with an amount of descent of the contact portion and then the substrate separation assisting device ejects the fluid to the contact portion.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 1, 2013
    Date of Patent: August 11, 2015
    Assignee: EBARA CORPORATION
    Inventor: Akira Nakamura
  • Method of manufacturing a tubular member
    Patent number: 9085027
    Abstract: A method of manufacturing a tubular member having a non-constant thickness by ironing at least a portion of the tubular material. The ironing apparatus can have a punch and a die, and the die can have a convex and concave side surface opposing the punch. The method can include bending an axial end portion of the tubular material to form a bent portion. The tubular material can then axially engage the die at the bent portion, and then the punch can be moved relative to the die to iron at least a portion of the tubular material.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 16, 2011
    Date of Patent: July 21, 2015
    Assignee: Topy Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Kishiro Abe, Takamitsu Takano, Koji Takeuchi, Katsuki Kato, Takayuki Nonaka, Satoru Miyashita, Tsuneo Watanabe, Kenji Taguchi, Akira Nakamura, Yuji Iwakura
  • Discriminative distance weighting for content-based retrieval of digital pathology images
    Patent number: 9081822
    Abstract: Content-based retrieval of digital pathology images (DPI) is a fundamental component in an intelligent DPI processing and management system. The fundamental procedure of the retrieval is evaluating the similarity between the query image and every image in the database with some distance function, and sorting of the latter based on their distances to the query. A novel approach to optimally combine a set of existing distance functions into a stronger distance that is suitable for retrieving DPI in a way respecting human perception of image similarity is described herein.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Date of Patent: July 14, 2015
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Xun Xu, Akira Nakamura, Shengyang Dai, Su Wang
  • BATTERY STATE CONTROL CIRCUIT, BATTERY STATE CONTROL APPARATUS, AND BATTERY PACK
    Publication number: 20150140374
    Abstract: A battery state control circuit is provided for use in a battery pack including a plurality of battery units connected in series, and a plurality of coils connected in parallel with the plurality of battery units respectively. The battery state control circuit includes one or more switching elements each connected between one of the coils and a corresponding one of the battery units, wherein turning ON and OFF of the switching elements is controlled based on a difference between a voltage at a first junction point where a corresponding one of the switching elements and a corresponding one of the coils are in contact and a voltage at a second junction point where the corresponding one of the switching elements and a corresponding one of the battery units are in contact.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 24, 2014
    Publication date: May 21, 2015
    Applicant: RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
    Inventors: Norifumi Yamamoto, Akira NAKAMURA
  • Image classification apparatus with first and second feature extraction units and recording medium having program recorded therein
    Patent number: 9031305
    Abstract: An image-classification apparatus includes: a first feature extraction unit to acquire a feature value of each of block images obtained by segmenting an input image; an area-segmentation unit to assign each of the block images to any one of K areas based on the feature value; a second feature extraction unit to acquire, based on an area-segmentation result, a feature vector whose elements including, the number of adjacent spots, each including two block images adjacent to each other in the input image, for each combination of the areas whereto the two block images are assigned; or a ratio of the number of block images assigned to each of the K areas to all the number of block images adjacent to a block image assigned to each of the K areas; and a classification unit to classify to which of a plurality of categories the input image belongs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 30, 2013
    Date of Patent: May 12, 2015
    Assignee: Panasonic Healthcare Holdings Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Akira Nakamura
  • Rutile-type titanium dioxide and cosmetics using the same
    Patent number: 8986742
    Abstract: A Rutile-type titanium dioxide having a rectangular particulate form configured such that major axial planes of rod-shaped particles having a minor axis diameter of 3 to 10 nm are oriented and aggregated in the minor axial direction, and a rod-shaped rutile-type titanium dioxide obtained by treating the rectangular rutile-type titanium dioxide with heat, wherein an apparent average major axial length of the oriented and aggregated particles is 100 to 400 nm, an apparent average minor axial length thereof is 30 to 150 nm, an apparent average axial ratio represented by apparent average major axial length/apparent average minor axial length is 2 to 5 and a specific surface area thereof is 10 to 100 m2/g.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 18, 2013
    Date of Patent: March 24, 2015
    Assignee: Titan Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Akira Nakamura, Masayasu Morishita, Hisayoshi Funatsu, Caihong Liu
  • SPRAY GUN FOR COATING, SPRAY COATING DEVICE, AND METHOD FOR PRODUCING ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHIC PHOTOCONDUCTOR
    Publication number: 20150079275
    Abstract: A spray gun, which contains: a coating liquid nozzle configured to discharge a coating liquid from an outlet; and a flow channel forming member configured to surround an outer perimeter surface of the coating liquid nozzle to form an air flow channel, through which atomizing air passes, between the outer perimeter surface of the coating liquid nozzle and the flow channel forming member, wherein the spray gun is configured to atomize the coating liquid with the atomizing air to spray the atomized coating liquid to a coating target, wherein a gap T of the narrowest part of the air flow channel is 0.48 mm or smaller, and wherein a ratio T/L of the gap T to a distance L from the narrowest part to an apical surface at which the outlet of the coating liquid nozzle is open is 0.60 or greater.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 12, 2014
    Publication date: March 19, 2015
    Applicant: RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
    Inventor: Akira Nakamura
  • Method for producing laminated electronic component, and laminated electronic component
    Patent number: 8864925
    Abstract: A method of manufacturing a laminated electronic part includes fabricating first and second laminated sheets by laminating an insulating function layer made of an unsintered ceramic material and a conductor layer, having a plurality of conductors two-dimensionally arranged in a vertical direction and in a horizontal direction to make up part of circuit components; cutting the first and second laminated sheets into sticks to create a plurality of first and second laminate sticks; fabricating a third laminated sheet by rotating the second laminate sticks by 90°, arranging the second laminate sticks to be each sandwiched between the first laminate sticks, and thermocompression bonding them for integration; singulating the third laminated sheet into chips and creating sintered bodies by sintering the unsintered chips to integrate the first laminate with the second laminate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 21, 2011
    Date of Patent: October 21, 2014
    Assignee: TDK Corporation
    Inventors: Kazunari Kimura, Misaki Tabata, Shigemitsu Tomaki, Akira Nakamura, Isao Abe, Noriyuki Saito
  • Information providing apparatus and method, terminal apparatus and information processing method, and program
    Patent number: 8856133
    Abstract: An information providing apparatus, including a storage configured to store registration information as related with a category; recognition means configured to recognize the category corresponding to acquisition information acquired from a terminal apparatus; and communication means configured to transmit the registration information corresponding to the category of the acquisition information to the terminal apparatus.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 27, 2010
    Date of Patent: October 7, 2014
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Yoshiaki Iwai, Shunichi Homma, Akira Nakamura
  • SUBSTRATE DRYING APPARATUS, SUBSTRATE DRYING METHOD AND CONTROL PROGRAM
    Publication number: 20140259728
    Abstract: A substrate drying apparatus includes a drying gas nozzle configured so that, assuming that a surface WA of the substrate W is a projection plane, regarding the drying gas flow Gf in the nozzle moving direction Dr, a collision position Gfw with the substrate W is located downstream of a projected discharge position Gfv?, the projected discharge position Gfv? being a discharge position from the drying gas nozzle projected on the projection plane. In a three-dimensional space, the drying gas flow Gf is inclined, such that an angle ? formed by an axis Ga of the drying gas flow Gf and a vertical line Wp of the substrate W is in a range from a half contact angle ?/2 to an angle determined by deducting the half contact angle ?/2 from 90°, the half contact angle ?/2 being a half of the contact angle ?.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 27, 2014
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: EBARA CORPORATION
    Inventors: Tomoatsu ISHIBASHI, Takahiro OGAWA, Kenichi SUGITA, Shinji KAJITA, Koichi FUKAYA, Akira NAKAMURA
  • CHARACTERIZING PATHOLOGY IMAGES WITH STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF LOCAL NEURAL NETWORK RESPONSES
    Publication number: 20140270431
    Abstract: For digital pathology imaging, intelligent processing, such as automatic recognition or content-based retrieval, is one significant benefit that drives the wide application of this technology. Before any intelligent processing on pathology images, every image is converted into a feature vector which quantitatively capture its visual characteristics. An algorithm characterizing pathology images with statistical analysis of local responses of neural networks is described herein. The algorithm framework enables extracting sophisticated textural features that are well adapted to the image data of interest.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 14, 2014
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Xun Xu, Akira Nakamura, Su Wang
  • COMBINING INFORMATION OF DIFFERENT LEVELS FOR CONTENT-BASED RETRIEVAL OF DIGITAL PATHOLOGY IMAGES
    Publication number: 20140270432
    Abstract: Content-based retrieval of digital pathology images (DPI) is a fundamental component in an intelligent DPI processing and management system. One key issue of content-based DPI retrieval is how to represent an image as a feature vector, capturing its key information that is most relevant to the goal of retrieval. A unified framework of extracting information of different levels for DPI, namely low level color information, middle level texture information and high level diagnostic information is described herein. Such information from all the levels are integrated to the end of content-based DPI retrieval.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 14, 2014
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Xun Xu, Shengyang Dai, Akira Nakamura, Su Wang
  • MANIFOLD-AWARE RANKING KERNEL FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
    Publication number: 20140279755
    Abstract: A manifold-aware ranking kernel (MARK) for information retrieval is described herein. The MARK is implemented by using supervised and unsupervised learning. MARK is ranking-oriented such that the relative comparison formulation directly targets on the ranking problem, making the approach optimal for information retrieval. MARK is also manifold-aware such that the algorithm is able to exploit information from ample unlabeled data, which helps to improve generalization performance, particularly when there are limited number of labeled constraints. MARK is nonlinear: as a kernel-based approach, the algorithm is able to lead to a highly non-linear metric which is able to model complicated data distribution.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 14, 2014
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Xun Xu, Akira Nakamura, Dian Gong, Su Wang
  • DISCRIMINATIVE DISTANCE WEIGHTING FOR CONTENT-BASED RETRIEVAL OF DIGITAL PATHOLOGY IMAGES
    Publication number: 20140270496
    Abstract: Content-based retrieval of digital pathology images (DPI) is a fundamental component in an intelligent DPI processing and management system. The fundamental procedure of the retrieval is evaluating the similarity between the query image and every image in the database with some distance function, and sorting of the latter based on their distances to the query. A novel approach to optimally combine a set of existing distance functions into a stronger distance that is suitable for retrieving DPI in a way respecting human perception of image similarity is described herein.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Xun Xu, Akira Nakamura, Shengyang Dai, Su Wang
  • Substrate drying apparatus, substrate drying method and control program
    Patent number: 8769842
    Abstract: A substrate drying apparatus includes a drying gas nozzle configured so that, assuming that a surface WA of the substrate W is a projection plane, regarding the drying gas flow Gf in the nozzle moving direction Dr, a collision position Gfw with the substrate W is located downstream of a projected discharge position Gfv?, the projected discharge position Gfv? being a discharge position from the drying gas nozzle projected on the projection plane. In a three-dimensional space, the drying gas flow Gf is inclined, such that an angle ? formed by an axis Ga of the drying gas flow Gf and a vertical line Wp of the substrate W is in a range from a half contact angle ?/2 to an angle determined by deducting the half contact angle ?/2 from 90°, the half contact angle ?/2 being a half of the contact angle ?.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 11, 2013
    Date of Patent: July 8, 2014
    Assignee: Ebara Corporation
    Inventors: Tomoatsu Ishibashi, Takahiro Ogawa, Kenichi Sugita, Shinji Kajita, Koichi Fukaya, Akira Nakamura
  • Optical module
    Patent number: 8774241
    Abstract: To constitute an optical module comprising a mount and a board that supports the mount, wherein a solid-state laser device that oscillates fundamental laser light, a pump light source that pumps the solid-state laser device, and a wavelength converting device that converts a wavelength of the fundamental laser light oscillated by the solid-state laser device are mounted on the mount, the mount is divided into three blocks, that is, a first block on which a laser medium is mounted, a second block on which the pump light source is mounted, and a third block on which the wavelength converting device is mounted. A side surface or a bottom surface of only the second block is fixed to the board, the first block is fixed to the other side surface of the second block, and the third block is fixed to a side surface of the first block.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 18, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 8, 2014
    Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
    Inventors: Akira Nakamura, Masamitsu Okamura, Keiichi Fukuda, Chise Nanba, Kazutaka Ikeda