This study proposes an in-pipe camera, named “Fujin,'' which is propelled using the air blowing method, and an effective pipe inspection procedure. “Fujin'' can travel long distances with many bends as both the head unit with a camera and the entire tether are propelled by air blowing. This characteristic contributes to the reduced cost and time of pipe inspection because the number of cutting points in the pipeline can be reduced. This study defines mechanisms to reduce friction with pipe walls and the structure of a jig required for operation to achieve high performance with regard to "Fujin" for the visual inspection of pipelines. In addition, the laboratory testing and field testing to evaluate the performance of the designed system are reported. As a result, it has been confirmed that the proposed concept is valid and the designed system is applicable to the actual pipe inspection.

We developed a rehabilitation robot based on electromyogram (EMG) during reaching movements to improve upper limb motor function impairment that occurs in hemiplegics with chronic stroke. The upper and lower limits of EMG triggered therapy were set based on the muscle activity patterns of healthy subjects during isometric muscle contraction in eight directions (vertical, horizontal, and diagonal). The training results for the three participants suggest the effectiveness of the proposed method in learning the muscle activity patterns of the good example. The results also suggest a need to provide feedback on how far away from the threshold the muscle activity patterns were.

Currently, as measures against environmental destruction, an agricultural method called synecocultureTM has been received attention. A robot that can perform agricultural work is under development, but because it is difficult to operate in a complex environment with dense vegetation, an improved operating interface was necessary. In this study, we developed a continuous operation system for weed pruning, seed planting, and harvesting that can be operated in densely vegetated areas. By using the developed control system, a 49% reduction in operation time and a 26% reduction in collision rate with obstacles were achieved in three sequential tasks in densely vegetated areas.

In this paper, a compact telescopic mechanism with a high extension and retraction ratio is fabricated for use in the work arm of an agricultural robot that works on crops in densely vegetated areas. We confirmed that a high extension and retraction ratio can be achieved in a compact form by utilizing the deformation of a thin metal plate in the shape of a rain gutter, which is also the mechanism of a metal measuring tape. By using the attraction force of a magnet to bundle multiple pieces, high rigidity against compressive and bending deformations was verified.

To extend the paralyzed fingers of a stroke victim with hemiplegia, we have proposed a low-dimensional control system for a robotic finger which can grasp an object between the robotic finger and the paralyzed human fingers. In this study, we newly propose an extra finger that can face multiple fingers with low-dimensional control. This can be realized by adding a rotational joint for moving the base of the robotic finger where it is controlled by the common low-dimensional synergy controller. Experimental results showed that the proposed extra finger could realize 33 grasping postures and 4 peg manipulation patterns.

A Straight Twisted Polymeric Fiber Actuator (STPFA) has attracted attention as a new rotational actuator because it is soft, lightweight, silent, and inexpensive. It can rotate when heating, and be back when cooling. However, it is difficult to improve the response, especially in the cooling phase when using natural cooling. In order to improve the response in natural cooling, antagonistical actuation is one of the effective methods. However, the diactivated-side actuator generates a disturbance-like torque when the other-side actuator is activated due to its passive torsional spring-like characteristics. In order to realize the antagonistical actuating module using a pair of rotational-type STPFA, in this paper, the models are constructed that can estimate the torque generated at both ends of an antagonistically arranged rotational STPFA from the change in heater resistance. A sensorless output torque control method is proposed for the total torque obtained as the difference between the torques at the two ends using the proposed STPFA models. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through fundamental experiments using a prototype module.