Conference Presentations by Robert W Johnston
14th Eco-Energy and Materials Science and Engineering Symposium, 2018
Many studies on the conductor loss of the copper-clad dielectric substrate have already been repo... more Many studies on the conductor loss of the copper-clad dielectric substrate have already been reported. And a method of obtaining frequency characteristics of the conductivity from the measured value by applying the concept of effective conductivity is adopted. In this report, the decrease rate of the signal line cross-sectional area due to the skin effect is estimated from the transmission characteristic measurement according to the physical law that the cross-sectional area of the signal line decreases due to the skin effect instead of the conductivity frequency characteristic.
The 10th International Symposium on Advances in Technology Education, 2016
In this program, 2-D FDTD source code was introduced with references for beginners so that a prog... more In this program, 2-D FDTD source code was introduced with references for beginners so that a progressive series of simulations including model creation, source code modification, compilation, results output on display while introducing some of the specific analysis cases such as wire and reflector antenna, waveguide, diffraction, scattering, shielding, and cavity could be experienced. With this, it has become possible to introduce specialized content at the same level of researchers of about 20 years ago to the current lab's student experiments level. In the future, this educational training will lead to the development of a free electromagnetic field and wave simulator that is suitable for practical use.
Proceedings of The Second International Conference on Electronics and Software Science (ICESS2016), 2016
When considering an action decision based on a future prediction, it is necessary to know the pro... more When considering an action decision based on a future prediction, it is necessary to know the property of a disturbance signal from the outside environment. On the other hand, the acquisition of the property of the disturbance signal depends on the specifications of the target processor, in particular, its sensor resolution or processing ability. Therefore, sampling rate settings are limited by hardware specifications. In contrast, future prediction using machine learning is based on the tendency obtained through past training or learning. In this type of situation, the learning time increases in proportional to the amount of training data. In this paper, we focus on reducing the amount of training data. In particular, we consider the situation where a periodic disturbance signal occurs. From this perspective, we propose a method that adjusts the sampling rate dynamically based on the frequency of the disturbance. The results of verification experiments confirm that the proposed method can adjust the sampling rate according to the frequency property of the disturbance signal. Moreover, it is confirmed that each control response corresponds better to the disturbance than in the case where a fixed sampling rate is applied.
With the push that NIT has had to cultivate Global Engineers, stress on ramping up English Educat... more With the push that NIT has had to cultivate Global Engineers, stress on ramping up English Education at NIT has followed. However, there is a significant difference between the content of the English taught in the English Classroom and the English that the young engineer will use in his or her specific field in their future workplace or research laboratory. Thus, the English-based "Fundamentals of Electronic Circuits Laboratory" course was implemented for third year Electronic Systems Engineering students at NIT, Kagawa College, Takuma Campus (NIT, KC-Takuma). The thirdyear course begins with simple analogue electronic components and circuits and takes the students through to digital microcontrollers and physical computing. All educational materials including lab manuals and lab worksheets are in English. All instruction is also given in English. To encourage the students to use English during class they are required to ask all questions in English as well. As an effort to encourage motivation in the class, students are also given some "ownership" of learning in the form of a final project. Students were given the freedom to decide what electronic system they are going to design and build and were allowed to present their design to the rest of the class. Although presenting the material in English at times required additional time to repeat or explain, all of the units in the course were completed within the time allotted for the lab for the school year. It was evident that students understood much of the English as they were able to complete all laboratory tasks. In conclusion, there may be other courses at NIT that could be taught entirely in English that would positively affect student's English ability and comfort level using English without affecting the acquisition of the concepts presented in the course.
IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS/MIC), 2015
The purpose of this study was to develop an educational system in order to visualize radiation in... more The purpose of this study was to develop an educational system in order to visualize radiation interactions in the learner's forearm through the use of Augmented Reality (AR) technology. The interactions are calculated by PHITS simulation code and the particle trajectories or the energy depositions are overlaid on live images captured by a USB camera. The system used ARToolKit library to overlay the box and bone 3D CG objects on the learner's forearm. The objects are generated by using Metasequoia4. The program has four modes of operation, X-ray Tomography, Heavy Ion Therapy, PET Imaging, and BNCT. By selecting one, the learner can learn about interactions of photons, carbon ions, positrons, and neutrons, respectively. The bone objects are overlaid only in the X-ray Tomography mode. As a result, the learner can see a simulation of the different interactions caused by each of the four kinds of radiation inside the learner's own forearm as 640 pixel × 480 pixel composited images on a PC screen at just over 5 fps.
This is a preliminary study that examines how students perceive their own English ability, and be... more This is a preliminary study that examines how students perceive their own English ability, and between the two types of learning styles employed, which they prefer. This paper also examines correlations between a student's self-assessment, peer-review, and teacher's assessment. Two different learning styles are adopted in the English for Engineers course at the National Institute of Technology, Kagawa College. During the lesson block for English for Engineers class, two lessons are given. The first lesson is based on regular direct instruction and taught from a textbook in a lecture format. The second lesson is activity/project based in which student teams of two or three members are given a mock research task to create an invention, implement it with LEGOs and give a multimedia presentation in English on their invention. The presentation format is very similar to the NIT, Kagawa College graduation research presentations where the teams present background information, problem statements, methods, results, and a conclusion for their mock research project. There is also a short Q&A session in which other students may question the presenters in English. Students evaluate their own as well as all of the other students' presentations. While the overall average score of the peer evaluations was very close to the instructor's evaluations, the students' individual selfevaluations were much lower than both the peer and instructor's evaluations. Further study is needed to determine the reasons for this inconsistency. As for their learning preference, students indicated on a scale from 1 to 5 their preference for the direct instructional lesson versus the activity and project based lesson and explained their choice. The survey showed that the students preferred the activity and project based lessons over the direct instructional lessons. However, when surveyed directly on which type of class structure they preferred, students preferred the current lesson block consisting of one direct instructional class and one activity/project based lesson. These findings could be applied by remodeling the NIT, Kagawa College first, second, and third grade English curriculum to something similar to the Advanced Course English for Engineers course.
International Symposium on Advances in Technology Education, 2014
With recent internationalization, the necessity of an English education is becoming more importan... more With recent internationalization, the necessity of an English education is becoming more important. In the case of the Japanese National Institute of Technology, English teachers generally teach English as a second language, so students seldom learn any English related to their field of engineering study. Students are not well prepared for technical meetings held in English. Hence, it is imperative that students learn the technical English used in their field of engineering.
International Symposium on Advances in Technology Education, 2014
Programming languages are a crucial element of the information technology program. Student lack o... more Programming languages are a crucial element of the information technology program. Student lack of motivation to learn programming languages has been a serious hurdle for the program. The authors consider that motivating students to study programming is the foundation for the beginning of learning the subject. To address this, the authors implemented a discovery learning based LEGO Mindstorms NXT development activity in the programming curriculum. Development on the NXT platform provided students with feedback by means of the ability to check the results of their programs visually and within a timely manner. This activity also gave students the opportunity to link classroom lecture content with practical implementation. The positive affect this curriculum had on the students' motivation for learning programming was confirmed via the results of student questionnaires.
International Symposium on Advances in Technology Education, 2012
At present, tablet computers are rapidly becoming popular and they are recognized as a new educat... more At present, tablet computers are rapidly becoming popular and they are recognized as a new educational device alternative to the personal computer. As an approach to utilize tablet computers for education, we developed an educational software application for tablet use. There are hundreds of software applications that help students learn English individually, especially for the purpose of memorizing new English vocabulary words. Alternatively, our software involves face-to-face learning in which students share one tablet computer. Students compete against one another in choosing the correct answer to wordmatch questions. In the course of its development, we found that the user data logging system is also an essential tool for student assessment. To meet this demand, we developed an ad-hoc system using Bluetooth hardware commonly present in today's tablet computers. The reason for implementing this system with Bluetooth hardware rather than a Wi-Fi network is the fact that some schools may, not necessarily have a Wi-Fi network capable of supporting more than 40 devices. There were many difficulties in the development of this software; debugging the code, connection of 40 tablet computers, and so on. Through the development of this software, I personally gained a great deal of invaluable experience as an Information Engineering student.
14th International Symposium on Advances in Technology Education, 2021
Actual device fabrication experience is important for students to gain deep understanding. A nano... more Actual device fabrication experience is important for students to gain deep understanding. A nanotechnology platform established for the average science laboratory that makes the design, fabrication and evaluation possible is crucial to achieve this purpose. Simple methods for the following processes including impurity diffusion control depending on the type of silicon substrate surface, fabrication of silicon dioxide thin film for the insulation layer, fabrication of the thin film for the electrodes, and a lithography process to make the circuit pattern are required. In this study, we investigated the simplification of all these processes under a normal air environment with simple apparatus and in the limited environment of an average science laboratory. Thermal diffusions of phosphorous and boron, thermal oxidization of the surface of the silicon substrate and sintering of the silver contained material for the electrode prepared under a normal air environment were studied and successfully demonstrated to make and control p-n junctions which are the foundation for various kinds of semiconductor devices. In addition, a simplification of a photo lithography process was also studied by our original idea of the photo mask design making and revising process using a transparent plastic sheet without using special CAD soft. Approximately, 20µm line as the highest resolution and less than 10µm as the pattern alignment error was achieved without using XYZθ stage. Furthermore, a simple evaluation apparatus consisting of average PC and the analog & digital circuit design kit for the device evaluation also proposed and successfully demonstrated to measure the I-V characteristic of the p-n junction. As the result, the possibility to establish the design and fabrication processes required to make MOS and bipolar transistors, which are the basic devices of integrated circuit design was successfully demonstrated. It was confirmed that these results can contribute to establish a nanotechnology platform which is as same level as the early days of semiconductor research laboratory, at the average science laboratory level.
Papers by Robert W Johnston
IEEJ Transactions on Electronics, Information and Systems, 2017
In order to work effectively, a robot must be able to adapt to different environments by deciding... more In order to work effectively, a robot must be able to adapt to different environments by deciding the correct course of action in a given situation, using determinants other than pre-registered commands. That said, when considering an action decision based on a future prediction, it is necessary to determine the properties of a disturbance signal from the outside environment. Furthermore, determining the properties of a disturbance signal is dependent on the specifications of the target processor, in particular, its sensor resolution or processing ability. As humans, we often make a guess that face up to situations. In this case, we will explore rough adaptation to given situations. To apply this method to a robot, the ability to predict the future state of the robot is necessary. In this paper, we focus on control of a robot in an attempt to produce rough adaptation similar to that observed in humans. In particular, we consider the situation where a periodic disturbance signal occurs.
International Journal of New Computer Architectures and their Applications, 2016
When operating a robot in a real environment, its behavior is probabilistic because of slight tra... more When operating a robot in a real environment, its behavior is probabilistic because of slight transition of the robot's state or error in the action taken at a given time. In this case, it is difficult to operate the robot using rule-based-like action decision methods. Therefore, ad-hoc-like action decision methods are needed. A method is proposed for deciding on future actions based on a robot's present information. The state-action pair prediction method has been reported; it links the state and future actions of a robot using internal information. A statistical approach to state-action pair prediction has been introduced previously, in which the existence probability of a state and action in the future is calculated according to the normal distribution. This paper considers the situation where a command input is sent to an inverted pendulum. Based on this command input, the shape of the floor is changed from flat to undulating. The results of verification experiments confirm that the proposed method can adjust the shape of the floor autonomously.
IEICE Electronics Express, 2016
The use of a triple combination of theory, simulation, and lab exercise is most commonly used to ... more The use of a triple combination of theory, simulation, and lab exercise is most commonly used to promote better student understanding of microwave fundamentals. As part of the RF engineers training education program, an advanced experiments program has been developed in which students can experience successive trial and error procedures including design, circuit fabrication, simulation, and measurement. As a result, it is expected that it be possible for other colleges of technology to use these methods to help students better understand the basis of practical microwave circuit design procedures. In this paper, the design theory and production evaluation process are focused on waveguide inductive and capacitive window.
EPJ Web of Conferences
The purpose of this study was to develop a new educational system with an easy-to-use interface i... more The purpose of this study was to develop a new educational system with an easy-to-use interface in order to support comprehension of the biological effects of radiation on the human body within a short period of time. A paint spray-gun was used as a gamma rays source mock-up for the system. The application screen shows the figure of a human body for radiation deposition using the γ-Sprayer, a virtual radiation source, as well as equivalent dosage and a panel for setting the irradiation conditions. While the learner stands in front of the PC monitor, the virtual radiation source is used to deposit radiation on the graphic of the human body that is displayed. Tissue damage is calculated using an interpolation method from the data calculated by the PHITS simulation code in advance while the learner is pulling the trigger with respect to the irradiation time, incident position, and distance from the screen. It was confirmed that the damage was well represented by the interpolation method. The augmented γ-Spray system was assessed by questionnaire. Pre-post questionnaire was taken for our 41 students in National Institute of Technology, Kagawa College. It was also confirmed that the system has a capability of teaching the basic radiation protection concept, quantitative feeling of the radiation dose, and the biological effects
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Conference Presentations by Robert W Johnston
Papers by Robert W Johnston