Electromyogram-Based Lip-Reading via Unobtrusive Dry Electrodes and Machine Learning Methods.

Lip-reading provides an effective speech communication interface for people with voice disorders and for intuitive human-machine interactions. Existing systems are generally challenged by bulkiness, obtrusiveness, and poor robustness against environmental interferences. The lack of a truly natural and unobtrusive system for converting lip movements to speech precludes the continuous use and wide-scale deployment of such devices. Here, the design of a hardware-software architecture to capture, analyze, and interpret lip movements associated with either normal or silent speech is presented. The system can recognize different and similar visemes. It is robust in a noisy or dark environment. Self-adhesive, skin-conformable, and semi-transparent dry electrodes are developed to track high-fidelity speech-relevant electromyogram signals without impeding daily activities. The resulting skin-like sensors can form seamless contact with the curvilinear and dynamic surfaces of the skin, which is crucial for a high signal-to-noise ratio and minimal interference. Machine learning algorithms are employed to decode electromyogram signals and convert them to spoken words. Finally, the applications of the developed lip-reading system in augmented reality and medical service are demonstrated, which illustrate the great potential in immersive interaction and healthcare applications.

Design of a Microwave Heating and Permittivity Measurement System Based on Oblique Aperture Ridge Waveguide.

In this paper, an oblique aperture ridge waveguide operating at 2450 MHz is proposed, and, using the ridge waveguide, a permittivity measurement system is constructed which can measure the permittivity of materials during microwave heating. The system calculates the amplitudes of the scattering parameters by using the forward, reflected and transmitted powers of the power meters, and it reconstructs the permittivity of the material by combining the scattering parameters with an artificial neural network. The system is used to measure the complex permittivity of mixed solutions of methanol and ethanol with different ratios at room temperature, and the permittivity of methanol and ethanol with increasing temperature, from room temperature to 50 °C. The measured results are in good agreement with the reference data. The system allows simultaneous measurement of the permittivity with microwave heating and provides real-time, rapid changes in the permittivity during heating, avoiding thermal runaway and providing a reference for applications of microwave energy in the chemical industry.

Dried shiitake mushroom grade recognition using D-VGG network and machine vision.

Grading dried shiitake mushrooms is an indispensable production step, as there are large quality differences between different grades, which affect the product's price and marketability. Dried shiitake mushroom samples have irregular shapes, small morphological differences between different grades of the same species, and they may occur in mixed grades, which causes challenges to the automatic grade recognition using machine vision. In this study, a comprehensive method to solve this problem is provided, including image acquisition, preprocessing, dataset creation, and grade recognition. The osprey optimization algorithm (OOA) is used to improve the computational efficiency of Otsu's threshold binarization and obtain complete mushroom contours samples efficiently. Then, a method for dried shiitake mushroom grade recognition based on the improved VGG network (D-VGG) is proposed. The method uses the VGG16 network as the base framework, optimizes the convolutional layer of the network, and uses a global average pooling layer instead of a fully connected layer to reduce the risk of model overfitting. In addition, a residual module and batch normalization are introduced to enhance the learning effect of texture details, accelerate the convergence of the model, and improve the stability of the training process. An improved channel attention network is proposed to enhance the feature weights of different channels and improve the grading performance of the model. The experimental results show that the improved network model (D-VGG) can recognize different dried shiitake mushroom grades with high accuracy and recognition efficiency, achieving a final grading accuracy of 96.21%, with only 46.77 ms required to process a single image. The dried shiitake mushroom grade recognition method proposed in this study provides a new implementation approach for the dried shiitake mushroom quality grading process, as well as a reference for real-time grade recognition of other agricultural products.

Decoding silent speech commands from articulatory movements through soft magnetic skin and machine learning.

Silent speech interfaces have been pursued to restore spoken communication for individuals with voice disorders and to facilitate intuitive communications when acoustic-based speech communication is unreliable, inappropriate, or undesired. However, the current methodology for silent speech faces several challenges, including bulkiness, obtrusiveness, low accuracy, limited portability, and susceptibility to interferences. In this work, we present a wireless, unobtrusive, and robust silent speech interface for tracking and decoding speech-relevant movements of the temporomandibular joint. Our solution employs a single soft magnetic skin placed behind the ear for wireless and socially acceptable silent speech recognition. The developed system alleviates several concerns associated with existing interfaces based on face-worn sensors, including a large number of sensors, highly visible interfaces on the face, and obtrusive interconnections between sensors and data acquisition components. With machine learning-based signal processing techniques, good speech recognition accuracy is achieved (93.2% accuracy for phonemes, and 87.3% for a list of words from the same viseme groups). Moreover, the reported silent speech interface demonstrates robustness against noises from both ambient environments and users' daily motions. Finally, its potential in assistive technology and human-machine interactions is illustrated through two demonstrations - silent speech enabled smartphone assistants and silent speech enabled drone control.

Ultrasoft Porous 3D Conductive Dry Electrodes for Electrophysiological Sensing and Myoelectric Control.

Biopotential electrodes have found broad applications in health monitoring, human-machine interactions, and rehabilitation. Here, we report the fabrication and applications of ultrasoft breathable dry electrodes that can address several challenges for their long-term wearable applications - skin compatibility, wearability, and long-term stability. The proposed electrodes rely on porous and conductive silver nanowire based nanocomposites as the robust mechanical and electrical interface. The highly conductive and conformable structure eliminates the necessity of conductive gel while establishing a sufficiently low electrode-skin impedance for high-fidelity electrophysiological sensing. The introduction of gas-permeable structures via a simple and scalable method based on sacrificial templates improves breathability and skin compatibility for applications requiring long-term skin contact. Such conformable and breathable dry electrodes allow for efficient and unobtrusive monitoring of heart, muscle, and brain activities. In addition, based on the muscle activities captured by the electrodes and a musculoskeletal model, electromyogram-based neural-machine interfaces were realized, illustrating the great potential for prosthesis control, neurorehabilitation, and virtual reality.

Semi-Empirical Prediction of Residual Stress Distributions Introduced by Turning Inconel 718 Alloy Based on Lorentz Function.

The residual stress of machined surface has a crucial influence on the performance of parts. It results in large deviations in terms of the position accuracy, dimension accuracy and service life. The purpose of the present study is to provide a novel semi-empirical residual stress prediction approach for turning Inconel 718. In the method, the bimodal Lorentz function was originally applied to express the residual stress distribution. A statistical model between the coefficients of the bimodal Lorentz function and cutting parameters was established by the random forest regression, in order to predict the residual stress distribution along the depth direction. Finally, the turning experiments, electrolytic corrosion peeling, residual stress measurement and correlation analysis were carried out to verify the accuracy of predicted residual stress. The results show that the bimodal Lorentz function has a great fitting accuracy. The adjusted R2 (Ad-R2) are ranging from 95.4% to 99.4% and 94.7% to 99.6% in circumferential and axial directions, respectively. The maximum and minimum errors of the surface residual tensile stress (SRTS) are 124.564 MPa and 18.082 MPa, those of the peak residual compressive stress (PRCS) are 84.649 MPa and 3.009 MPa and those of the depth of the peak residual compressive stress (DPRCS) are 0.00875 mm and 0.00155 mm, comparing three key feature indicators of predicted and simulated residual stress. The predicted residual stress is highly correlated with the measured residual stress, with correlation coefficients greater than 0.8. In the range of experimental measurement error, the research in the present work provides a quite accurate method for predicting the residual stress in turning Inconel 718, and plays a vital role in controlling the machining deformation of parts.

Sensitivity Analysis of Johnson-Cook Material Constants and Friction Coefficient Influence on Finite Element Simulation of Turning Inconel 718.

The Johnson-Cook (J-C) constitutive model, including five material constants (A, B, n, C, m), and the Coulomb friction coefficient (µ) are critical preprocessed data in machining simulations. Before they become reliable preprocessed data, investigating these parameters' effect on simulation results benefits parameter-selecting. This paper aims to investigate the different influence of five settings of the J-C constitutive equation and Coulomb friction coefficient on the turning simulation results of Inconel 718 under low-high cutting conditions, including residual stress, chip morphology, cutting force and temperature. A three-dimensional (3-D) finite element model was built, meanwhile, the reliability of the model was verified by comparing the experiment with the simulation. Sensitivity analysis of J-C parameters and friction coefficient on simulation results at low-high cutting conditions was carried out by the hybrid orthogonal test. The results demonstrate that the simulation accuracy of Inconel 718 is more susceptible to strain hardening and thermal softening in the J-C constitutive model. The friction coefficient only has significant effects on axial and radial forces in the high cutting condition. The influences of the coefficient A, n, and m on the residual stress, chip thickness, cutting force and temperature are especially significant. As the cutting parameters increase, the effect of the three coefficients will change visibly. This paper provides direction for controlling simulation results through the adjustment of the J-C constitutive model of Inconel 718 and the friction coefficient.

Semi-Empirical Prediction of Residual Stress Profiles in Machining IN718 Alloy Using Bimodal Gaussian Curve.

Residual stresses are often imposed on the end-product due to mechanical and thermal loading during the machining process, influencing the distortion and fatigue life. This paper proposed an original semi-empirical method to predict the residual stress distribution along the depth direction. In the statistical model of the method, the bimodal Gaussian function was innovatively used to fit Inconel 718 alloy residual stress profiles obtained from the finite element model, achieving a great fit precision from 89.0% to 99.6%. The coefficients of the bimodal Gaussian function were regressed with cutting parameters by the random forest algorithm. The regression precision was controlled between 80% and 85% to prevent overfitting. Experiments, compromising cylindrical turning and residual stress measurements, were conducted to modify the finite element results. The finite element results were convincing after the experiment modification, ensuring the rationality of the statistical model. It turns out that predicted residual stresses are consistent with simulations and predicted data points are within the range of error bars. The max error of predicted surface residual stress (SRS) is 113.156 MPa, while the min error is 23.047 MPa. As for the maximum compressive residual stress (MCRS), the max error is 93.025 MPa, and the min error is 22.233 MPa. Considering the large residual stress value of Inconel 718, the predicted error is acceptable. According to the semi-empirical model, the influence of cutting parameters on the residual stress distribution was investigated. It shows that the cutting speed influences circumferential and axial MCRS, circumferential and axial depth of settling significantly, and thus has the most considerable influence on the residual stress distribution. Meanwhile, the depth of cut has the least impact because it only affects axial MCRS and axial depth of settling significantly.