The purpose of this paper is to verify a capability of injection mold design, through the evaluation on roughness sensation of plastic texture through visual and tactile sense. We used injection molded sample textures which have hemispheric protrusions arranged in a grid on base plane (‘dot pattern’). In sensory test, panels evaluated roughness of six kinds of dot pattern samples made from combinations of protrusion size (R0.05-0.15mm) and interval (0.13-0.33mm), by tactile impression or by visual impression. The results are as follows: (1) Roughness feeling by haptic information depended on interval of protrusion. It was suggested that roughness is determined by frequency of the stimulation, in this dimensions range. (2) Roughness feeling by visual information depended on diameter of protusion. We considered that roughness is determined by the contrast.

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Recently, language sense processing engineering has been studied. For example, some systems which generate punning riddles have been proposed. “Muri-Mondo” is a Japanese traditional wordplay using pun and antonym. This paper proposes a generation system of “Muri-Mondo” using an integrated word database and juncture rules. A ring structure of semantic related words generates the “Muri-Mondo” in the proposed system. This paper shows experimental results with some participants in order to confirm the validity of the proposed system.

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There are seven indicators for the criteria of sensory function evaluation of cloth pattern in Japan. Only specialists have implemented these indicators that are lack of versatility. We propose the new mode of expression of seven indicators using onomatopoeia. The experiment was conducted on the specialists and small children. The result obtained from the experiment for which small children participated indicated that one index can be determined by two onomatopoeias. Seven indicators have a high possibility to be symbolized by using the sign to express each onomatopoeia. Specialists and infants used completely different onomatopoeia. We speculated that difference ways of idealizing the onomatopoeia are the reason for this.

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Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) is one of the techniques which incorporate a human in optimization processes. It is a technique that replaces the fitness function of Evolutionary Computation with human subjective assessment. Therefore, it is possible to optimize complex problems incorporating human subjectivity, affection, etc. without making a complex mathematical model. However, it has two general problems; one is burden of interactions to the user, and the other is difficulty of global search. This paper proposes two methods that reduce the problems of IEC by combining Genetic Algorithm (GA) and knowledge acquisition from interaction records which is held a decision table form. Simulation experiments are conducted using an artificial problem, in order to verify the efficiency of the proposed methods, and compare them with related work. The experiment showed that proposed methods have better solution search efficiency than the related work.

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In recent years, we have a lot of opportunities to talk with people at remote locations using video chat systems and so on. However, such conventional remote communication systems cannot express presences of remote users sufficiently. Therefore, it is strongly required to improve the presences of remote users in remote communication. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the remote user's presence by combining a video of his/her actions and a humanoid robot. The video shows nonverbal information such as his/her facial expressions, lines of sight and gestures. The humanoid robot linked with the user's actions gives a feeling that he/she is really in the place. It is expected that the combination of these two factors improves the remote user's presence. We carry out experiments to verify effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves the remote user's presence.

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This paper outlines the work of the author and others in modeling combination value with the aim of developing an information system that can be used to propose satisfactory combinations to users when more than one item of a similar type must be chosen in combination. The three basic requirements that must be met in such cases were identified based on decision-making tendencies observed in the respective contexts of music, fashion, and food. Based on the hypothesis that the evaluation of the sense of a given item to be combined can be drawn in two dimensional space, representation of the overall sense of a satisfactory combination as a resultant vector, using vectors to represent the sense of respective items that meet the three basic requirements, is proposed.

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In this paper, we focus on business and the impedance that is a concept in the electrical engineering. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to provide a new knowledge in this field by using the concept of impedance, and to show the relation of the analogy between the impedance and business, and attractive approach to business, marketing, design, user experience (UX), etc. The meaning of analogy is to guess from those similar. It can be interpreted as one form of analogy, for example, also “parable”. When we have a new experience, we consider the problem by analogy from previous experience unconsciously. This is the basic idea of what we are practicing on a daily life. This concept will be applicable to create a new idea. Rather than bring the near ones, the important thing in analogy conception is that it borrows from a field with distance in contents. Its methodology leads to produce the innovation. If we borrow from a place close that everyone noticed, it is not possible to obtain a value to be expected. Engineering is a discipline that has been developed in the focus be useful to people originally. In addition, its history is old. For example, a core part of the mechanical engineering and electrical engineering is an area that has been established that have something immovable. This field is not an exaggeration to say that to form a “beautiful systematic academism”. Then the primary subject of this paper is to propose the concept of “business impedance”. Originally, both of “business” and “impedance” belong to the field of quite different respectively. Business is in “commercial world”, and the impedance is the field of “engineering”. Impedance is a concept in the electrical resistance of the exchanges in electrical and electronic engineering.

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To design products with high customer satisfaction, it is necessary that the suppliers must design attractive products for some specific customers. However, designing them is not easy because customers have different preference and Kansei affects for the products. The evolution of products is not common for each customer. We propose the method for designing the products by considering the different customer's Kansei. In this paper we analyse the interaction among product-attributes (color, shape etc.) and customer-attributes (gender, age etc.) which affects customer's Kansei. Analyzing the interaction leads to designing the production which some customer categories like in common and a customer category like. In this way, this paper considers the different customer's Kansei and proposes the products which fit for the customer's Kansei.

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Considering the great popularity of amusement machines and contact lens that magnify the iris, it is clear that eyes play a significant role in facial attractiveness. However, there have been few studies that investigated attractiveness using average faces while manipulating the size of the iris and the shape of eyelid. In this study, we generated average female faces with either flat or double eyelids, we also generated four patterns of the size of the iris, and asked participants to rate their attractiveness and how natural or otherwise the faces appeared. The research found a face with flat eyelids and an iris at 125% of normal size was judged more attractive and more natural than faces with double eyelids. These results suggest that females with flat eyelids can readily enhance their facial attractiveness utilizing commodities such as contact lens that magnify the iris.

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The aim of this study is to develop and evaluate a safety-oriented cloth using LilyPad Arduino. General reflectors allow users to avoid night-time traffic accidents. However, the reflectors penetration rate is only 20% because of the low designability and convenience. For improving their hindrances, we developed the safety-oriented cloth that is embedded seven LED lights. The safety-oriented cloth turns on the LED lights depending on user's environmental brightness. In addition, we investigated the performance based on designability and functionality via questionnaires. In the results of our investigation, we have confirmed that the safety-oriented cloth has enough designability and functionality as a fashionable and convenience substitute of general reflectors. We expect that the safety-oriented cloth enables us to increase our safety in the near future.

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