"Laughter is the best medicine" and "The good medicine none superior to laughter", as these proverbs have been existed, it has long been believed that laughter has health-promoting effect. Recently, it is confirmed that laughter has various effects of disease treatment. For example, it normalize NK-cell (natural killer cell) activity, relieve pain of rheumatoid arthritis, inhibit rise in blood sugar level and inhibit allergen reaction. Therefore, laughter is widely demanded from daily situation (cartoon, comedy and TV program) to medical situation of the hospital clown etc. In such background, we want to arbitrarily enhance person's laughter, and convert every situation into laughter. To attain this goal, we assumed that laughter can be enhanced by piling up various laugh induced stimuli (titillation, laughter, cartoon, comedy). Based on this assumption, we proposed noble concept of "Laugh enhancer system". According to this concept, we prototyped a system that produces laugh track (laughter) synchronized with the user's laugh motion. We named the system "Flatters". In this paper, after introducing our system overview, we examined laugh enhancement effect of Flatters.

This paper reports a development of an interactive communication system between outpatient and pharmacist for not only supporting the patient medical treatment, but also enabling pharmacist to constantly check the status of patient medication and address their problems. System hardware consists of a Web/mail sever and mobile handsets for outpatients and pharmacists working in dispensing pharmacies. Conventional systems were not useful because of low interactivity between pharmacist and patient, and low usability of handset that discouraged their motivation. In order to improve those user experience quality meeting needs of patient, we - researchers of engineering collaborated with pharmaceutical communication experts and pharmacists working in dispensing pharmacies. In our system developing, interaction between pharmacist and patient is divided into three sections, which are, 1)interaction between patient and handset, 2)interaction between pharmacist and handset, and 3)interaction between patient and pharmacist. Interaction requirements were studied in each of the three interaction sections incorporating the opinions of patients. To realize the interaction requirements, iPhone was adopted as user terminal, and iPhone applications were originally developed. For future experiments for pediatric patients, system parameters and contents are developed for pediatric patients.

In recent years, computer music software has been widely used from novice users to professional musicians. It provides users with the ability to compose, perform and publish digital music. Most of current computer music software mainly focus on supporting a music creation process of an individual user. In contrast to digital music creation of an user, online collaborative music creation among multiple users is very difficult, because users have no means to communicate and negotiate to share an ambiguous musical idea among the users, which is inevitable in collaborative music composition in nature. In this paper we propose a support system for online collaborative music creation among casual users. The proposed system called Marble has a piano roll interface which allows a group of casual users to collaboratively edit music data and to synchronize music data among the users. We have conducted an experiment to observe how Marble could improve a collaborative music composition process. As the result of the experiment, we have found that Marble helped users collaboratively create better music with a smaller number of operations, than that of an existing system.

Recent psycho-physiological studies have revealed close relationships between human mental stresses and secretion of hormones. However, a precise elaboration of fluctuations in the secretion of these biomarkers in the time series against stress; especially against a rather mild stressful task is not yet clearly illuminated. In this study, we used the dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a major steroid hormone, as a biomarker of mental stress for 1) illustrating the precise stress-response in the time series, and 2) investigating a congruity of DHEA as the stress-biomarker. In the experiment, subjects were inscribed to conduct a simple, easy, and monotonous mental arithmetic task for about an hour with intermissions. As a result, salivary DHEA concentration depicted an accumulative increment over the experiment period, while no marked difference was obtained in the heart rate and its variability. It suggests the slow and long-lasting properties in the stress-response of DHEA unlike as in autonomous nervous system indices, and therefore plausibly demonstrates the possible candidacy of DHEA as a biomarker for a mild stressor.

In human-robot interaction, robots often fail to convey humans' intentions or to draw them into lively conversation due to the robots' limited ability to express emotions. This paper proposes an emotional motion modification method using motion subtle expressions (MBEs) that generate emotional variations of a motion by combining MSEs based on a two-dimensional emotional model comprised of valence and arousal. We conducted experiments to validate the proposed method. MSEs for expressing valence and arousal were selected based on the results, and the outcomes of a subsequent experiment showed that our method effectively generated emotional motions. Additionally, the effects of generated emotional motions were evaluated in the experiment. The results showed that emotional motions could possibly influence users' attitudes and decisions. We believe that our method is useful to design various services that typically use an emotional approach to affect users' attitudes - for example, sales promotions or health management assistance.

In aging society, traditional arts seriously face on difficulties of finding successor because the artisan skill has to be handed on through among them. This research aims to extract the gazing point from head mounted camera and visualize it on fixed cameras for skill acquisition to hand down invisible heritage. In this research, augmented eye-tracking data on fixed cameras are able to visualize craftsman's inclination of the eye movement and make advance by overlapping the images through SIFT matching and affine transform. We applied this system on Japanese traditional art skills of cutting and pasting gold leaf, which is called "KIRIKANE". From visualized images, we found that craftsman unconsciously pays attention to two specific areas on working space in the cutting phase. In the pasting phase, craftsman's gazing point does not get out of alignment from pasting line. Furthermore, the visualized images made the learners of the "KIRIKANE" easier to understand craftsman's skill.

The authors have developed a literacy learning system that presents hiragana characters on a stereoscopic 3D display. Strokes of hiragana character were arranged in different depth direction on this learning system. The authors used a Multi-layered display (MLD) for representation depth direction. MLD is not produce asthenopia by 3D representation. It is not discrepancy between accommodation and convergence in human visual function. MLD contains two LCD that arranged front and back. MLD using hue value and chroma can create depth perception between two LCD. The authors used new method that was stereoscopic hiragana character adding different depth of strokes on MLD. The authors found that a position of depth can control and representation in each strokes. These results suggest that stereoscopic vision can help children with developmental dyslexia understand the structure of hiragana characters.

Small touch screen device has been a prevailing technology. With such a device, its user may input text with both hands‐holding the device with the non-dominant hand and inputting text with the dominant hand, or cradling it with both hands and typing with both thumbs. The two-handed input provides a stable holding position in exchange for the freedom of hands. If user conducts one-handed input with the device, it may require complicated strokes of fingers or unstable holding position for tapping; hence, the user may not continue holding and inputting text. In this paper we propose a one-handed text input method for small touch screen devices, in which user continues rubbing the screen with the thumb. It may provide a stable holding position for one-handed text entry.

Some drivers can understand the ways that they should follow to get to their destinations, but others are apt to lose their ways easily. What is the difference between them? If we can answer this question, we are able to develop a fine car navigation system. Today's car navigation systems provide the drivers with much information about the circumstances, but too much information may affect their safe drive. To know the essential information for the navigation, it is necessary to investigate what the drivers look at during traveling. An experiment was carried out in which the drivers' situation awareness was collected using Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT). On the other hand, their ability of spatial travel understanding was estimated based on a route recall test and a turn recognition test. The relation between these data reveals the essential information for the navigation.

This paper describes a method to recognize and learn a character handwritten in the air. This recognition method uses the motion direction instead of positions of the device. It also doesn't use the information of pen up and down. It selects and orders character candidates with DP (dynamic programming) matching. To use this matching, at first, we analyzed standard character shapes and made penalty codes and dictionary. However, the recognition rates was not stable. Therefore, we adopted Genetic Algorithm in order to define those parameters. As a result, we get general penalty codes which doesn't depend on users and dictionary. And we improve recognition rates of bad operator by learned dictionary. But recognition rates with evaluation data by learned dictionary is not so effective compare with learned penalty codes.

The aim of this paper was to evaluate Web search performance on the basis of the movement trajectory of mouse pointer. For all participants, less mouse movements were observed for the image-based link condition than for the character-based link condition. This tendency was more remarkable for older adults. More mouse movements were observed with the increase of the number of hyperlinks per Web page. When the layered structure was shallow, the following difference of mouse operation characteristics between young and older adults was observed: While older adults made an attempt to locate the search item while moving a mouse simultaneously, young adults began to move a mouse after locating the search item.

This paper describes two experiments to compare paper and electronic media in cross-reference reading for multiple documents. In the first experiment, twenty-four subjects proofread text documents with referring other documents by using paper and a PC with a 27-inch display. Under the paper using condition, proofreading time was 23.2% shorter and error detection rate was 11.5% higher than that of the PC using condition. Considering that the difference of reading performance was derived from the operability of moving and arranging documents in each media, we conducted another experiment to confirm this hypothesis. In the second experiment, twenty-four subjects arranged the position of documents by using paper and a PC. As a result, under the paper using condition, they arranged documents 23.3%~62.9% faster than that of the PC using condition. We consider that easiness of moving and arranging documents contributes to speedy comparison among documents and this has an effect on the performance of proofreading. Moreover, in order to make clear the reason why people can easily move and arrange documents using paper, we compared performing speed in the document arrangement task by giving the restriction of single-handed operation or by restricting the area where the subjects could touch. Based on these results, we experimentally confirmed three advantages in operating paper: (1) people can operate multiple sheets of paper at the same time by using two both hands, (2) people can operate paper without catching a glimpse of operating position, and (3) people can directly operate physical paper with touch sensation.

The effects of tree aroma on an automobile driver's wakefulness and active safety (e.g., keeping the appropriate time headway to the preceding vehicle) were investigated using a driving simulator. In this study, the supplying condition of Alpha-Pinene, that can minimize the olfactory stimulation of the driver and also can increase the effects on active safety, was investigated. Six different supplying conditions including two olfactory levels and three levels of supplying time (15s, 30s, 60s) were evaluated. It was clarified that supplying the aroma with short supplying time and high olfactory level, for instance, the supplying time span; 15 and the olfactory level; 4 (0: no odor, 5: intensive odor) is effective to satisfy above two conditions. The positive effects on these were continued for 5 minutes after one shot of supplying the aroma. It can be said that the intermittent supply in this condition and 5 minutes time cycle is one of the optimized supplying sequence.

We propose a novel method to estimate the objects that a user is focusing on by using the synchronization between the movements of objects and a user's eyes as a cue. We first design an event as a characteristic motion pattern, and we then embed it within the movement of each object. Since the user's ocular reactions to these events are easily detected using a passive camera-based eye tracker, we can successfully estimate the object that the user is focusing on as the one whose movement is most synchronized with the user's eye reaction. Experimental results obtained from the application of this system to dynamic content demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method over existing methods.