It has become difficult to differentiate industrial products as a point of view of the quality due to development of high production technology in each country and company. Development of products satisfying Kansei, requirement and preference of customers, has been becoming important and indispensable. This paper describes the development of a system emerging polka dots, which are widely used in the field of clothing pattern, based on Kansei of customers. The system is composed of two subsystems which determine color and arrangement of polka dots based on customer's Kansei. Questionnaires to investigate the relationship between the polka-dots colors, polka-dots arrangements and the impressions were performed. A neural network system to generate polka-dots design from required impressions was constructed based on the questionnaire results. The required impression is expressed by nine Kansei words with weight coefficients for color and by seven Kansei words with weight coefficients for arrangement.

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Our research purpose is to develop a system for ergonomic design, which enables an ergonomic evaluation for various products without “real” subjects and physical mockups by integrating a digital hand with a product model. In this paper, we propose a new method of hand model reconstruction for individuals. This method reconstructs an initial surface skin mesh and a link structure model of the hand for an individual by using the motion capture system.

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In recent years, it is required for substrate handling such as glass plate of FPD, silicon plate of solar cell to develop the non-contact transportation technology. In this study, ultrasonic flexure vibration stator is set above the substrate which is levitated by aerostatic table. It is assumed that three components of forces act on transported substrate; squeeze force, viscosity force generated by stator and aerostatic force. Because the squeeze force inclines the substrate, the horizontal component of aerostatic force is to be drag force. The time-varying distribution of air film pressure is investigated numerically by compressed Reynolds equation. The results of numerical analysis of attitude and position of substrate were compared with measured value to verify the proposed theory. The offset weight to incline the levitating substrate was approximately proportional to horizontal force. The measured results of film thickness, inclination of substrate and drag force by relative position of stator agreed approximately with numerical results.

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This paper describes development of an in-pipe mobile robot driven by pneumatic pressures. Town gas is supplied to houses through polyethylene pipes laid under the road. It are necessary to inspect these pipes regularly caused by the gas leak owing to earth load and oscillation for driving cars on the road. The robot is fabricated on the model of a green caterpillar for the purpose of inspecting these pipes. The caterpillar moves forward on leaf by waving motion of somites and clinging to a leaf for using abdominal legs and anal prolegs. The robot is structured by three somites and four suction brakes. This somite which structured by four pneumatic bellows actuators plays the role of the caterpillar's somite, and suction brake plays the role of the abdminal prolegs and anal prolegs. We confirmed that the robot's moving speed is 9.2 mm/s at acrylic pipe more 110 mm in inner diameter, and maximum traction force is 28.4 N. The robot having traction force 28.4 N can move mathematically in a horizontal pipe which has two elbows and 30 m length. In addition, mechanism of traction force is clarified by using the dynamic model of the robot.

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