The distance it takes for drivers to come to a complete stop after braking was measured in order to find out the various braking distances of drivers. The experiment was carried out by candidates from the general public (regular drivers) with ages ranging from 20 to 70 as well as Japan Safe Driving Center trainees. Deceleration and braking pressure were also measured in the experiment to find out the differences between each driver's emergency braking technique. Braking distance is influenced by velocity and road conditions. Therefore, braking distance results were assessed by comparing them with the ideal braking distance in the field of experiment, and also comparing them with the predicted braking distance for the particular road condition. Most of the braking distance results were distributed above the predicted braking distance and in some cases were up to twice of the predicted braking distance. The trainees' braking distance results were shorter than that of the regular drivers. The age did not affect the result. The differences in braking distances mainly depended on the maximum braking pressure. Although there were differences in each driver's maximum braking pressure and braking speed, there were little differences in the form of braking pressure.

View full abstract

The relationship between foot morphology and foot troubles caused by shoes were investigated for elderly women (60-81 years) in order to improve the fitting comfort of shoes. Foot troubles were investigated by questionnaires for 50 elderly women. The relationship between foot length and foot girth was examined for 91 elderly and 149 young adult women (18-27 years). Fifty elderly women and 166 young adult women were divided into three groups respectively according to their foot length. The two age groups of the same foot length were compared for 17 foot dimensions, three angular measurements, two indices, and estimated scores for four 3D shape characteristics. The results show that 1) elderly women have a larger foot girth than young adult women of the same foot length, and that 2) elderly women have smaller toe I angle and larger toe 5 angle, higher ball and instep heights, and longer length from heel to the medial malleolus. Using subjects with troubles, the causes of the trouble were investigated by comparing subjects with a specific trouble and subjects without it. The trouble on the 1st toe was related to small toe I angle, the trouble on the 5th toe to small toe 5 angle, and the trouble on the 4th toe to short length from heel to the medial malleolus. The troubles on the 1st toe and on the lateral malleolus was related to the specific characteristics of elderly women. The implication of these relationships to the improvement of the shoe comfort was discussed.

View full abstract

In order to have a good communication between human and robot, it is important for robot to infer the kind and the degree of human emotions from his/her behaivior. This paper proposes a human-like recognition system to identify the degree of human emotions from beckon motion. Three kinds of emotions are selected to be recognized, which are “Angry”, “Hurry” and “Friendly”. First, using the Subjective Rating method, human ability is analyzed of estimating others' mental states from some kinds of emotional beckon motions. This result shows that human can distinguish beckon motions which reflect three different kinds of emotions. Second, six feature parameters are extracted from a hand-tip motion to describe the characteristics of each emotional beckon movements. Some of these parameters have correlationship to the degree of emotions evaluated by the Subjective Rating method. Then, human-like recognition system is constructed with neural network. This neural network learns the relationship between six feature parameters and the results of the Subjective Rating. Finally the validity of this recognition system is confirmed by experiments.

View full abstract

The aims of this study are to investigate whether eidetic aptitude is related to art appreciation, and to conduct a fundamental research to clarify functions of eidetic imagery in the design activity. First, 81 undergraduates participated in an art appreciation task. Multivariate analysis was used to investigate differences in how subjects evaluated a sample of 6 artworks. Through data analysis by principal component analysis (PCA), three aspects of the subjects' artistic evaluations were found: Familiar, Dynamic and Value. Next, nine of 81 subjects (four identified as eidetikers and five non-eidetikers) were analyzed. As a result, it was found that eidetikers rated artworks higher on Familiar and Dynamic than non-eidetikers. These results suggest that eidetikers are inclined to rate the artworks more positively than non-eidetikers.

View full abstract

This paper describes the method for the previous announcement of robotic arm motions to reduce human's threat against the robot. The notice is performed by lighting several LED markers attached at the endpoint of the robot arm and the effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated as follows. The time when the LED markers turn on before the arm moves is investigated. In one trial of the experiment, the arm moves toward the subject with a noticed time. The trials are performed repeatedly and the velocity and the time are chosen randomly. After one trial, the subject marks his/her impressions of the threat against three items fear, surprise and disgust. From the results, it is observed that the marks of two items, fear and surprise are high when the noticed time is short, and those of disgust are high with the time of more than 2.5 seconds. Therefore, it is found an optimal time in which the marks of the all items are low and it is about 1 second. Next, the previous notice for the direction and the velocity of the endpoint of the robot arm is evaluated. These announcements are displayed by selecting the number and the color of lighting the LED markers. The experimental results show that the threat of the human ca n be controlled by giving the previous notice of the direction and the velocity of the robot arm. Moreover, these results are verified statistically.

View full abstract