It is often the case that people with developmental disorders face some difficulty in their daily lives related to the fact that they are not good at operating their own body. The authors have developed two types of training games, through which people with such disorders can activate and improve their body regulatory abilities. All they have to do is just to follow these two steps respectively. The first is to make consciousness of the body center of gravity control. And the second step is to acquire their abilities by keeping "socially-suitable" body posture without paying any special attention to their body. In this report, the development and improvements of the first-step game are described. The game is carefully designed, developed, and improved because ASD people are said to have rather strong resistance against new and inexperienced items. The prototype game was improved twice especially in its length of body holding period, feedback sound, etc. Through these improvements, the game has reached such a level that it can be easily used in lessons at school. Games are thought to be a suitable method for the people with developmental disorders to enhance their abilities. In some cases in our half-year experiment, some increase of social adaptivity of the users was observed through the game sessions.

The present study investigates the design of interaction of agent and learners' affective states during an activity on a large scale web-base tutoring task. We especially focus on how learners' and agents characteristics such as gender influence emotional states of the learner. Also, we analyze how those emotional states are influenced impressions towards the agent. The types of emotions were analyzed based on Russell's(1980) two-dimensional circumplex model. Results of two experiments consistently revealed that male students were sensitive to the pleasantness bipolar and female students were sensitive to the activation bipolar. Further investigations also show that female learners with arousal states evaluated the agent positively. Male learners with pleasure feelings evaluated the agent positively in some degree.

In order to write a well-shaped character, it is necessary to move the hand that holds a pen or a brush properly. In calligraphy school, the teacher holds the student's hand and instructs the student about a proper motion, if the student's hand goes far beyond the reference trajectory. Such kind of instruction is carried out based on a pressure presentation technique. What is important at this process is to instruct the student only when an instruction is necessary. In this paper, a pressure presentation device for correction of writing motion was developed. This device has two stimulation levers and that can be mounted on the human's arm. By driving each lever individually, it is possible to instruct the student about a proper motion. It is expected that a student can practice writing motion according to the pressure presentation generated by the developed device. In several experiments, subjects carried out copying motions following a pressure presentation, and the usability and effectiveness of the developed device was confirmed.

In this paper, learning interface using velocity control method of manipulators in virtual environment is proposed. This interface is developed for learning about rigid body dynamics which is a part of physics education in Japanese high school. By adjusting velocity of manipulators ' hand effector based on measured learner ' s hand positions, the system can avoid possibility that hand effectors penetrate inside of other objects. So the proposed velocity control method has only one parameter it is easier to adjust the operating characteristic of manipulators ' hand effector than any other control methods such as virtual coupling. Moreover, using virtual body helps the learners to find one's state in virtual space. The virtual body is controlled based on user's hands position (position of 3D haptic interface devices) by using inverse-kinematic algorithm. Evaluation of the proposed method is conducted in some experiments. In these experiments, it is indicated that the subject can control rigid body in virtual space by using the proposed interface.

In this paper, we propose an augmented reality (AR) system with a leaser show device as a hands-on display at a science museum. The AR system provides virtual information which learners can handle visual explanation on an exhibited item. Accordingly, the learner certainly understand his/her knowledge through the AR display without any modification to the item and/or the existing displayed explanation. Using the AR system, we have conducted intensive experiments for children visitors at Gamagori Museum of Earth, Life and the Sea". In the experiments, we have evaluated the following points: i) the AR display makes learners interested in the exhibited item; ii) students can easily handle the AR display; and iii) the AR display is useful for learners to construct their knowledge. As a result, we conclude that the AR display system enabled learners to construct their knowledge in reality. And that the system makes learners interested in the exhibited items.

Most existing digital camera user interfaces place little emphasis on selfportrait options. Therefore, it is not always easy to take self-portraits using conventional user interfaces. This paper presents a vision-based head gesture interface for controlling a self-portrait camera that helps users to take self-portraits effectively and efficiently. Intuitive nodding and head-shaking gestures control the camera zoom in/out on the face, and a mouth-opening gesture triggers the camera to take a picture. We evaluated its usability factors (effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction) and compared it to a remote control in a user study. The results suggest that our interface is useful for taking self-portrait pictures.

In the present study, the complexity evaluation interface for operator training scenario for nuclear power plant operation has been developed for the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) based on the concept of cognitive complexity. Although the system for scenario evaluation had already been developed for the conventional type of BWR (BWR-5), the evaluation method has to be modified so that the characteristics of improved interface design and alarm classification have been taken into account. Through the evaluation using seven typical training scenarios, the basic validity of the developed system has been confirmed.

The purpose of this work was to characterize the pointing device operations with a single finger in supine position on an adjustable bed in order to improve assistive technology for users with physical disabilities. Experimental work consisted of using participants assumed physical disabilities who performed tasks that involved moving the cursor to specified locations on the PC screen in specific directions. The experiments were performed using the trackball in sitting position and supine position. In sitting position the factors were display locations and operation finger conditions. The experiment in supine position was performed using the index finger and the factors were display locations and reclining angles on the adjustable bed. In the results, the ease of cursor movement were found to have different characteristics depending on display locations. In supine position the results identified diagonal directions to be difficult. Especially, when the conditions were supination position with the right side display, the operation was more difficult and required the more time. Therefore to optimize the operational performance of the pointing devices, the direction and speed of cursor movement needs to be independently controlled to meet the individual posture and PC usage environment of the user.

Mobile phones and video game controllers using gesture recognition technologies enable easy and intuitive operations, such as scrolling browser and drawing objects. However, usually only one of each kind of sensor is installed in a device, and the effect of multiple homogeneous sensors on recognition accuracy has not been investigated. Moreover, the effect of the differences in the motion of a gesture has not been examined. We have investigated the use of a test mobile device with nine accelerometers and nine gyroscopes. We captured data for 27 kinds of gestures for a mobile tablet. We experimentally investigated the effects on recognition accuracy of changing the number and positions of sensors and the number and kinds of gestures.

It is necessary to design web pages that users can access the information easily. In website design, color scheme is one of important elements. The prediction method of visibility of color scheme has been proposed. In this method, neural networks are proposed to predict paired comparison tables which show visibility of background and foreground colors. We improve this method and propose neural networks with Guth's color vision model. We propose how to extract color features with the color vision model and to learn neural networks to predict visibility of color scheme. We collect data of visibility with paired comparison tests on the web browser and evaluate proposed method. The results obtained from our experiments show that proposed method can improve visibility of color scheme.

This paper describes a correction method for change in vibratory perception caused by adaptation using KI-VPA (Katagiri Aida model-based Vibratory Perception Adaptation) model. Vibration alert interface conveys infromation such as distance and degree of risk by change in vibration frequency and vibration pattern. However vibratory perception at same frequency is changed by the adaptation. The KI-VPA model that shows the vibratory adaptaion is proposed in order to correct the change in vibratory perception. An correction experiment using KI-VPA model is carried out, and verify effectiveness of the proposed correction method.

When we perform a task that involves operating many windows, we cannot access the objects behind them. As a result, we are frequently forced to switch the foreground window or temporarily forced to move it. Such window manipulations arise because of the difference between the dimensions of the windows and the cursor. In this paper, we propose a technique, in which the cursor is able to go underneath windows using a normal mouse. The results of our user study show that our technique allows users to perform a task faster than they typically operate windows using mouse-only and mouse-keyboard operations.

This paper proposes a novel driver assist system for enhancing driver recognition of a vehicle in a blind spot. The system changes the yaw angle of the side mirror when a vehicle is in the blind spot. There are two design alternatives: (1) the system changes the angle of the side mirror dynamically (DAMS), (2) the system turns on a lamp in addition to dynamic change of the side mirror angle (EDAMS). The results of an experiment showed that the lamp may not be necessary, and that the systems were effective when another vehicle is in the right blind spot.