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To satisfy the stringent regulations for exhaust gas emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles, large amounts of Rh and Pd have often been employed in three-way catalysts (TWCs) as the main active components. On the other hand, Pt-based TWCs are not often used in gasoline vehicles because Pt is readily sintered by its exhaust gases at approximately 1000 °C [1, 2]. In general, Pt-based TWCs must be located away from large thermal loads to maintain the active sites for gas purification. Based on this background, we previously reported that employing a small amount of CeO2 calcined at 1000 °C (cal-CeO2) in Pt-based TWCs was one of the most effective approaches for improving the catalytic activity without increasing the amount of Rh and Pd [3]. The effect of cal-CeO2 was attributed to the higher redox performance and Pt dispersion derived from the strong interactions between Ce and Pt.

Low-temperature activity is an important requirement for automotive catalysts. In particular, most of the tailpipe emissions occur right after the engine starts (cold emissions). These emissions can be effectively reduced by using a trap material such as zeolite for hydrocarbon (HC) adsorption [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. However, using zeolite as a trap material in automotive catalyst is limited due to its low durability under hydrothermal aging conditions. That is the reason why zeolites can be often used for diesel engines which usually run at lower temperature than the gasoline engines during entire mode driving. In most cases, zeolites need to be placed away from large thermal loads in order to take advantage of their adsorption abilities. In general, the thermal endurance of close-coupled catalysts for gasoline powered vehicles proceeds at about 1000 °C in the presence of water.

In this paper, a newly developed three-dimensional (3D) bird's-eye view map drawing technique for car navigation systems is described. Conventional navigation systems give pseudo-perspective views which can not express ruggedness like hills and valleys. Our newly developed navigation system can display undulation of the land from viewpoints above and behind the current position, so that ups and downs of roads along with the driver's destination can be seen easily. The 3D-road map is not only effective during navigation but also during route planning, because it assists in searching for fine views before travel. In order to achieve the 3D-map view, we developed graphics software libraries, which work on a 32-bit RISC processor and on a low-cost graphics accelerator LSI with texture mapping capability. The graphics software libraries are constructed with three stages, the perspective projection stage, visible-surface determination stage, and rendering stage.