The new evaluation method of geometrical accuracy for the 5-axis machining center (MC) based on the measured results of the machined workpiece has been developed. The strategy of our evaluation utilizes the coordinates measuring machine (CMM) as a master gauge because of its accuracy so that machine operator devotes to machine the workpiece and technologist of precise measurement dedicates to the measurement. In our study, the non-rotational machining is utilized to copy and trace the machine trajectory on the workpiece by minimizing the machining error. The profiles of machined workpiece are measured and evaluated by CMM and the geometric errors of the machining center are extracted. The measured results are enough accurate compared with those by the square master gauge calibrated by CMM previously. In this report, the machining setup including workpiece design, tool and cutting conditions is proposed and the evaluated results are shown with the experimental procedures.

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The miniaturization of many machine parts for machine tools is desired for the purpose of effectively utilizing space, energy saving and realizing desktop factories. To develop a compact and miniaturized NC machine tool, new downsized small parts such as electrical parts and mechanical parts must be developed. Therefore, in spite of the many requirements of the market related to the miniaturization of machine tools, a miniaturized machine tool has not been widely regarded. We have developed a new CNC lathe with a pipe frame structure. This structure is expected to enable the miniaturization of machine tools while sufficient space for the discharge of cutting chips and the wiring. The heat transfer between the pipe elements and connecting blocks strongly affects the axial displacement of the pipes. Therefore the heat transfer between the pipes can be reduced by controlling the temperature of the appropriate connecting blocks. Results for the thermal displacement control of this structure and the effects are reported in this paper.

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In recent year, environmental degradation is concerned. The "sustainable development" has become important issue in Japan, because natural disaster triggered nuclear plant accident and environmental pollution is raised. Therefore, future petroleum crisis is feared. In manufacturing, machining fluid (metal working fluid: cutting oil, grinding fluid) is used for performance increasing. It contains oil, surface active agent, extreme pressure agent (CI, S, P etc.), anti foam agent, preservative agent, biocide etc.. It is concerned that several chemicals causes worker's health hazard while machining. Moreover, it is necessary that waste fluid treatment (incineration or coagulative precipitation etc.) is performed. Huge environmental load (CO_2 emission etc.) and disposal cost is necessary. Then, decreased or non-using of machining fluid is demanded in industry. Then, in this investigation, the electric rust preventive machining method system that uses only water as machining fluid, is proposed and developed. In part of this, water recycle system that enables to re-use water is developed. This water recycle system removes sludge, chip, fine particle, rust and ion, bacteria and pollutant (cesium etc.) etc. from used water. In addition, iodine (pollutant) reduction is evaluated. Contaminated water iodine (0.055mg/L) is decreased to less than O.OO1mg/L. Water purification performance is clarified. And, purified refined water quantity is achieved over 1OL/min. Furthermore, in order to more safety, water recycle system is installed ultraviolet radiation unit for sterilization of bacteria without biocide using.

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Microchannel chips for use in micro total analysis systems have recently been attracting attention in the medical field. Generally, microchannel chips are composed of plastic or glass. Glass is strong in terms of heat and chemical erosion resistance, whereas plastic is weak. However, dies for manufacturing glass microchannel chips are currently not viable because they are composed of cemented carbide. Therefore, in this study, to manufacture cemented carbide microchannel chip dies, we examine methods of forming a fine groove by means of grinding using an electrodeposited diamond wheel. The results of the study clarify the relationship among mesh size, surface roughness, deviation of groove depth, and acuuracy of micro-grooves shape.

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Anisotropic materials represented by fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) or fiber reinforced metals (FRM) have been used in various fields because of their superior mechanical properties such as high specific strength. The machinability of these materials has been researched in the field of cutting for a long time. However, there is no report concerning the performance in loose abrasive machining. If the high precision machining of FRPs by the multi-wire saw becomes possible, the application to various fields is expected. The main purpose of this study is to clarify the suitable slicing conditions of FRPs by the multi-wire saw. In this report, unidirectional FRP is used as a work material, and the results through the slicing experiment by the multi-wire saw are described. The main conclusions obtained in this study are as follows. The sliced surface roughness deteriorates at the slicing angle of 30°. In slicing by multi-wire saw, which is the same as that of lapping, cracks in same degree as that of the particle size of abrasive grains used occur below the sliced surface, so that fibers are broken and chipped off when cracks reach the interface between the matrix and the fiber.

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Thin dicing blades are widely used for cutting hard-brittle materials such as ceramics, quartz, and semiconductor devices. In the cutting process, the sharpness of the dicing blades effect on the cutting characteristic. In order to improve the cutting characteristic of the dicing blades, authors developed the porous electroforming blade in this study. When we add pore forming agent in plating bath, the electroforming blades have porous structure. The porous electroforming blades have different pore rate and same abrasive grain of concentration. In an effort to judge sharpness of the electroforming blades, authors use manufactured electroforming blades as cutting silicon wafer. We measure most chipping size in per 50|im. This data translate into chipping size distribution. The electroforming blades have more pore, chipping size become smaller. As the results, it was known that the sharpness of the porous blades is better than that of traditional ones.

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This study deals with the reduction of coolant in cylindrical plunge grinding. As a first step, the scraper effect is examined by both FEM analysis and experiments, and the optimum scraper-wheel gap is investigated. The observation by high speed camera and the numerical analysis of turbulent flows reveal the the air-belt around the wheel surface is remarkably broken when the scraper-gap is below 1.5 mm. Judging from the occurrence of grinding burn, the coolant supply can be reduced to approximately 0.6 L/min by the installation air-scraper. The surface roughness of the workpiece suggests that there is an optimum scraper-wheel gap. However, there is room for further examination on that problem.

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This paper describes newly developed polishing pads for glass that improves stagnation ability of abrasives. In order to enhance stagnation ability of abrasives, the resins that had the high retention ability of abrasives was coated on a conventional polyurethane resin suede type polishing pad. The resins coated on polyurethane resin pad surface were chosen according to the measurements of contact angles and sliding angles. It was found that the removal rate of glass surface using epoxy-coated pad and polyimide-coated pad was increased compared with untreated pad. In particular, removal rate of glass using polyimide-coated pad was over three times as high as those using untreated pad because the porosity structure of pad surface were maintained when the amount of coating was increased . Polished glass surfaces were markedly improved by utilizing polyimide-coated pad. It was found that polyimide-coated pad had much higher durability than epoxy-coated pad.

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In this paper the media particles were added to conventional zirconium oxide (ZrO_2) slurry to improve polishing performance of glass. The plate-shape aluminum oxide (Al_20_3) particles were tested as media particles. The removal rate was increased 16% compared to the conventional abrasives. The composite particles slurry showed a higher sliding angle than conventional slurry, indicating that the additive particles improved the stagnation abrasives. The power spectrum density analysis of the finished glass morphology showed that the composite particles improved surface roughness with the spatial wavelength less than 10um. Finally, an epoxy resin polishing pad was employed with composite particles. Although, the removal rate of composite particle was equivalent to that of conventional abrasives, the surface roughness was improved by adding the media particles.

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In order to reduce the amount of using CeO_2 on polishing glass, we have developed technology that abrasives are composited with polymer particles. It has effect that improves retentivity of abrasive on the polishing pad. It is connected with raising polishing performance. On the other hand, we have investigated ZrO_2 abrasive as substitution of CeO_2 abrasive for polishing glass. This is the study investigated about metal salts as slurry additive agent on polishing glass using ZrO_2 abrasive and composite one. In order to investigate the effect, we evaluate the polishing performance of the dependences of slurry pH and slurry concentration of metal salt using ZrO_2 abrasive. We succeeded to raise the polishing performance using ZrO_2 composite abrasive and FeCl_2 as slurry additive agent. Finally, we are able to get the equivalent polishing performance to one of using CeO_2 abrasive. It means that ZrO_2 abrasive has possibility of substitution of CeO_2 abrasive.

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The lapping is one of the processing to remove waviness and roughness of the workpiece. Therefore, this processing is used to process of the silicon wafers. In this lapping process, the four-way lapping machine is generally using at the wafer processing of semiconductor chips. However, the silicon wafers have been changed to the large sized wafers to decrease the wafer cost, year by year. According to large size of wafers, the four-way lapping machine becomes large, the deterioration of wafer accuracy by deflection of heavy machine parts and the transportation of lapping machine have been a problem. In this study, it is an aim to study the possibility of high speed lapping using trial manufactured single-wafer lapping machine by authors. This lapping system is able to lap the single wafer using divided lapping plate. In this study, the relation between the position of workpiece and the accuracy of wafers was studied. At the results, it is clear that the surface waviness of cp200 wafer improves to 2um.

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Generally, optical parts are demanded of reduction for optical aberration, scattering or diffraction light, since information appliances are advanced features and high-performance. Laser printer is used many scanning optical parts, such as a polygon mirror and a photo sensitive drum. In order to reduce the faults of these optical parts, it is necessary to improve geometric surface roughness, decrease tear-out marks and scratch marks which are generated at ultra-precision cutting of aluminum alloy. Conventionally, ultra-precision cutting of flat and cylindrical parts are used straight diamond tool which is in the inclined state. However this machining method is difficult because of tool setting angle is very small range which can obtain a mirror surface. Therefore, in order to expand the tool setting angle range, the facet front edge was added to the straight tool. This study considered reduction of the surface faults of aluminum alloy when using ultra-precision cutting with a double facet tool.

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Recently carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) is considerably employed as structure material in airline industry because of its higher specific strength. At the present day, the principal process of CFRP machining is cutting. Usually, a cutting tool wedge angle is set to small one in the case that fibrous material is machined. However CFRP contains hard carbon fibers which lead tool edge to be damaged and then tool fracturing makes rapid progress during the processing. This causes fibers to remain on machined surface and it is a serious problem in cutting of CFRP. In order to reduce tool edge fracture, tool with a large tool wedge angle and a negative rake angle was employed. It is found that fracture of the tool edge in the case of a large wedge angle is smaller than that of the conventional tool.

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A chamfered cutting edge, which is commonly shaped in order to strengthen an edge of a cutting tool consisting of brittle material, easily causes an enhanced adhesion and a burr formation due to high compressive stress anterior to the edge. These problems lead to detachment of tool material and notch wear at depth-of-cut line, which would result in unexpected tool fracture. On the other hand, the edge shape promotes formation of a built-up edge (BUE) as a dead metal and can maintain it stably. Actually, the formed BUE is plastically extruded along to the chamfered edge and can prevent formation of the notch wear. In this study, basic experiments to investigate effects of chamfered tool edge preparation, such as chamfer angle and chamfered land texture on the BUE behavior were conducted. The results suggested that the plastic flow in the BUE extrusion can suppress the adhesion if the extrusion is arisen. Additionally, analytical modeling of cutting with chamfered tool was presented. The BUE shape could be predicted by considering principle of least work consisting of friction and plastic deformation work required to be extruded it.

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In this paper Study on the abrasion property of high carbon content tools of Co-Cr-Mo alloy. The Co-Cr-Mo alloys for medical use are highly corrosion resistant and abrasion resistant and have been used mostly for sliding parts of artificial joints. However, the work efficiency is quite low because it is extremely difficult to cut the alloys. To realize more efficient cutting works, we used a binder-less cBN tool in high-speed machining. We then found that high-precision, high-efficiency machining work could be performed.

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Carbon reinforced plastics (CFRP) is increasingly being used in the aerospace industry because of the high strength-to-weight ratios. Material stacks comprising CFRP and titanium alloy are used for structures for aerospace applications, where high mechanical loads exist. Drilling is used to make holes for fastening the composites by bolting. The drilling temperature effects on the hole quality. In this study, the hole bottom surface temperature during drilling of CFRP/Ti composite is measured by using an infrared radiation pyrometer with an optical fiber. The optical fiber is inserted in the oil hole of carbide drill to measure the temperature. In the drilling of CFRP/Ti, the temperature is about 80 °C during drilling of CFRP, and the temperature rapidly increases to 270 C at the beginning of the drilling of titanium and it increases to 750 °C at the exit side of titanium. In the drilling of Ti/CFRP, the temperature is about 170 C at the beginning of the drilling of titanium and it increases to 700 °C at the exit side of the titanium, and the temperature is about 180 °C during drilling of CFRP.

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In the current manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCBs), micro-drills are generally used to make smaller diameter through-holes in PCBs. Recently, DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) coated drill is used in the area of micro drilling of PCBs because of low friction of DLC. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the effect of the droplets on the surface of the groove of DLC coated drill. Series of drilling tests of PCBs have been carried out to investigate the drilling performance with DLC coated drill with droplets and without droplets, and with non-coated carbide drill. The cutting energy and the size of a chip when drilled with DLC coated drill without the droplets are smaller than when drilled with the non-coated carbide drill. On the other hand, when drilled with the DLC coated drill with the droplets, they are almost equivalent to when drilled with the non-coated carbide drill. It is important to eliminate the droplets on the groove of DLC coated drill to reduce the cutting energy when drilling PCBs.

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A force model is presented to predict the cutting force in drilling of anisotropic materials. The cutting process of rolled titanium alloy depend on the edge orientation with respect to the rolling direction of the workpiece plate. In drilling of the rolled titanium alloy, the cutting force oscillates during a rotation of the tool. The prominent frequency at the oscillation is double frequency of the spindle speed, which is induced by anisotropy in the material. The force model makes three dimensional chip flow with piling up the orthogonal cuttings, which are given by the orthogonal cutting data. The chip flow direction is determined to minimize the cutting energy. Then, the cutting force is predicted in the determined chip flow model. In order to consider anisotropy in the material, the shear stress on the shear plane in the orthogonal cutting data is associated with the edge orientation.

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This study deals with the cutting characteristics of drill reamer combined with drill and reamer edge. The drill reamer has the cutting edge for drilling and semi-finishing and finishing edge for reaming. An ordinary twist drill which has 2 flutes is also used to compare the cutting characteristics. The surface roughness of the drill reamer is lower than that of the ordinary drill, and the tendency is observed by burnishing effect of margin at reamer edge. Moreover, reamer edges of the drill reamer contribute to an improvement of cutting stability due to prevent a change of the cutting torque.

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In cutting using rotary cutting tool, it is expectable to become low friction since cutting fluid can be supplied near the cutting point. The machining tests of Aluminum alloy using a rotary cutting tool were carried out. As a result, the coefficient of friction between a tool and chips using MQL was smaller than 0.1 when cutting speed ratio Vt/V was 100. And the thrust force and the feed force were very small compared to the principal cutting force. Therefore a new machining method of thin wall was proposed. Thin wall of 0.5mm thickness has been made by using the new machining method with a rotary cutting tool.

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This study proposed the method to control residual stress of finish surface by the combination machining. The combination machining is combined burnishing process and finish cutting process. By burnishing process, the modified surface layer is obtained and the depth was approximately 0.1mm. The hardness and residual stress is approximately HV500 and -400MPa respectively. However, the surface roughness is inferior. Then, to obtain satisfactory surface roughness, finish cutting process is carried out keeping the depth of cut shallower than modified layer. After finish cutting process, its hardness and residual stress showed approximately HV350 and -300MPa.

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Generally, camshafts used in automobile engines are firstly made by forging or casting processes and then turning process is applied to remove a rough layer on the work materials as cast or forged. This process contains relatively harder conditions for cutting tool because of the unstable intermittent cutting derived from the eccentricity in shape and/or lack of uniformity of the work material microstructure. Thus the productivity in camshaft machining is limited in production time, tool life and surface quality of machined surface. In this study, cutting force analysis in rough turning of camshaft was performed. High-speed movie was successfully captured the transition from unstable interrupted cutting into stable continuous cutting, and the tool-work rubbing phenomena was observed after stop the feed. The amplitude of vibration in cutting and thrust forces were about 300N and 250N respectively, and rubbing forces were 200N and 80N respectively after stopping the tool feed. This rubbing may affect the tool life greatly, NC program was suggested to be modified at the machine shop in automobile factory.

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It applied cutting and processing to stainless steel SUS304 by the utilization of the ultrasonic vibration at the tool edge. Following summaries were obtained. The good machined surface which continues than the common use cutting long. The long tool life compared to the common use cutting.

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The micro-channel chip (micro total analysis system) attracts attention in the medical field. Generally, the photo lithography technology used in a semiconductor manufacture process is used as the manufacture method of a micro-channel chip die. However, there are many manufacturing processes like fabrication of a mask, the photo-resist application to a substrate, expensive facility of a clean room etc. So, this study examined how to form a fine groove by cutting with a micro endmill. This report examined experimentally the processing conditions which should be developed. As a result, relation between run out of a shank, groove width and surface roughness is clarified.

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3D shape generation by reverse modeling method is commonly used in various fields, ranging from industries to medical applications. 3D scanner is often used to obtain the fundamental measurement points for this reverse modeling. This study proposes a different approach of 3D shape generation using a combination of digital images and points measurement. First, photogrammetry method is presented to show the preliminary study of the image-based reverse modeling conducted prior to this research. Then, a point-measurement method is proposed and its basic procedure is presented. Using an application example for dental impression preparation, feasibility of the proposed method is discussed.

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This paper discusses a simulation study in a food processing company in Indonesia. The company produces meatballs and supports the operation of 16 meatballs outlet restaurants. The company's main challenge is fulfilling the customer's demand (restaurant demands) which is especially difficult during weekends & holidays. Implementation of MPS (master production schedule) is one way of handling this challenge. However the company needs to be assured about MPS before implementing it. This paper provides simulation for MPS implementation. With simulation, the effect of MPS on the meatballs production line can be observed. With it also can develop the overtime production schedule for meatballs production. The outcome of this paper shows how overtime production schedule (OPS) can minimize the unfulfilled customer demand without increasing production capacity.

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In sheet metal processing, several parts are cut from a sheet metal at punching process. Before punching process, layout of parts is decided by the nesting. To reduce the waste of raw material, it is necessary the parts are arranged as compactly as possible into one sheet metal. Therefore, the nesting is important factor for optimizing the layout of parts. However, if the nesting is executed without considering the following manufacturing processes, there cause various inefficiencies all over the processes. Though the nesting and the scheduling should be considered simultaneously for the efficient manufacturing, few studies have considered this idea. Under such understanding, in this study, we propose an integrated method for this purpose. To simplify the procedure, we adopt a dispatching rule based scheduling and Genetic Algorithm based nesting. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method through some computational experiments.

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In this study, a viewpoint from pick-up transportation has been deployed into reverse logistics optimization associated with VRP. In terms of the foregoing method developed one of the authors, the idea has been extended so that it can cope with not only the generalized Weber model but also intermediate destination model. Then, under thus optimized pickup plan, amount of CO_2 emission is evaluated for certain scenarios. Numerical experiment is provided to demonstrate the idea and to validate the proposed method.

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Under recent global competition and short product life cycle, we need to cope with agile problem-solving in manufacturing. With this point of view, this study provides a practical hybrid meta-heuristic method for a three echelon logistic network optimization belonging to a tactical level. It includes a new idea to solve multi-depot VRP practically and efficiently as well. It is expected to perform as an optimization engine for planning system cooperated with information system for inventory management. Numerical experiment has been carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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The conventional NC machining instructed by NC programs can achieve high efficiency and accuracy according to the tool path optimization and the collision avoidance. On the contrary, the flexibility of NC machining such as change of a machine tool or cutting tools to be used is ignored, because NC programs are generated far before the machining operation. Therefore, in order to adapt the shape deviation of raw material, the maximum raw material shape is assumed as a raw material shape, and tool paths have to be generated to remove the volume from the maximum raw material shape to the finished shape. This means that the most raw materials require waste time for air-cut motions in the total machining time. In order to eliminate these air-cut motions for each raw material shape, an NC program should be created just before the machining operation. In this study, the flexible NC programming, in which an NC program is generated one by one just before the machining operation to follow the change of machining situation, is proposed. As an example of the flexible NC programming, an NC program is generated just before the machining operation to follow the change of raw material shape. For this purpose, the CAD model representing the raw material shape is modified according to the on-machine measurement, and tool paths are generated to eliminate air-cut motion for each raw material shape. As the result, waste time for air-cut motion can be eliminated. Experimental verification using an actual industrial product was performed successfully.

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In this paper, we propose a modelling method to concurrently analyze environmental aspect and productive aspect in factory when designing manufacturing systems. The proposed modelling method provides to express relationships between manufacturing activities and mediatory things by considering the productive aspect and the environmental aspect. Using the proposed modelling method, evaluation items are extracted by specifying the mediatory things as inputs and outputs for the manufacturing activities. Case studies for a maching factory and a printed circuit board factory are carried out to confirm the efficiency of our proposed modelling method.

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Generally, ball end-mills are used for machining free-form surfaces. When machining free-form surfaces using ball end-mills, it is necessary to remove the cusps formed on machined surfaces. Since the cusp removal is performed on manual, it worsens form accuracy and needs much time. When a 5-axis machine tool is used with a flat end-mill for machining free-form surfaces, the form of the cutting edge of a flat end-mill can be fitted to the form of the surface at a point to be cut by adjusting the tool posture. Therefore, a flat end-mill can efficiently form surfaces of almost all the curvature with small cusp height. This paper proposes several methods to decide tool postures and tool paths for 5-axis control machining in order to efficiently and precisely machine free-form surfaces. For deciding the tool postures, two methods have been proposed. One method defines tool posture by matching the curvature at the surface point to be cut with the curvature of the cutting edge in the feeding direction. Another method defines the tool posture by matching the forms at the surface point to be cut with the form of the cutting edge in the feeding direction. As the tool paths, three methods: isoparametric lines, minimum curvature lines, and constant cusp-height lines, have been proposed. The basic system based on the proposed methods was constructed, it was verified that the proposed methods were effective for machining free-form surfaces.

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In this paper, we propose a dynamic job shop scheduling method to minimize tardiness with consideration to sequence dependent setup times. Schedules are generated using switching priority rules to increase due date allowances, which mean flexibility for uncertainty, to be robust in dynamic environment. Numerical experiments using two different s/p ratios (the ratio of mean setup time to mean processing time) show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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This paper deals with an education planning method of human operators considering production plans. The human operators carry out the machining operations by using manual machine tools based on their skills in the target manufacturing systems. The individual human operators can obtain the new skills to operate the machine tools by receiving the trainings. New education planning method is proposed based on the integer programming in this research. The integer programming determines the suitable numbers of training and that of machining operations executed by human operators for productions.

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Industries need to evaluate the productivity and energy consumption concurrently when designing and improving manufacturing systems. Manufacturing system simulation to evaluate productivity was often used. However, manufacturing system simulation to evaluate productivity and energy consumption concurrently was not proposed. The purpose of our research is to establish manufacturing system simulation for productivity and energy consumption. In this paper, first, our proposed manufacturing system simulation is described. Second, a production planning method applying our proposed manufacturing system simulation is proposed. Finally, a case study for a semiconductor manufacturing system is carried out to confirm the production planning method applying our proposed manufacturing system simulation.

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A circulation type society formation has been advocated to mitigate the environmental load, as environmental issues due to human activities have been emphasized. Hence, a numerical analysis of a circulation type society is carried out to verify influences on consumers from the view point of costs and parts flow in a multi agent system. For this purpose, five kinds of agent are modeled in the simulation: Product part, Product maker, User, Material supplier and Recycler in this research. Through a simple numerical example, an average user cost and user purchase variations due to the reuse parts are analyzed, a feasibility of the analyzed results is discussed in this paper.

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Man-machine cooperative systems are widely used in the assembly lines of the industrial fields in order to reduce fatigue of the operator. In this assembly line, two tasks (automatic conveyance and manual operation) are performed by using one system. And there are flexible parts in the assembled parts. For the controller of the system, there are three functions are required. First is switching control for smooth switching form automatic conveyance mode to manual operation mode. Second is to prevent the excitation of the vibration. Third is to suppress the produced vibration in the manual operation mode. Conventionally, we proposed the smooth switching method using an impedance model for the requirements. In this paper, we propose the new method to prevent the excitation of vibration using the notch filter with time varying damping coefficient. And we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method through experiments.

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In this paper the assist-handle for manual conveyance of flexible parts and its semi-active operation assist controller are simultaneously designed by using nonlinear programming. The assist-handle consists of a variable damper and a mechanical spring. The variable damper and the mechanical spring are connected in parallel. The assist-handle can be attached to a general hand cart, through which a human operates the hand cart. In order to suppress the vibration of the flexible part, the operating force is shaped by changing the viscosity of variable damper. The semi-active operation assist control is designed by using the bilinear optimal control theory. The effectiveness of the assist-handle and the semi-active operation assist control are verified by simulations. Moreover the structure of the assist-handle is designed. On the basis of the obtained optimal parameters, the specifications of the components of the assist-handle are decided.

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In this paper, a consideration is conducted on control systems for power assist conveyance of flexible structures. The authors have developed a scheme of "robust assist" and a power assist cart adopting the robust assist control system based on the scheme. The control system consists of an impedance controller, a disturbance accommodating suboptimal controller, a disturbance observer and a reaction force controller in order to achieve the robust assist against structured uncertainties. In this control system, a controller designer can design the mechanical impedance characteristics and the disturbance reduction performance, respectively. However, the effectiveness of the use of the two control elements has not been fully addressed yet. Therefore, this paper shows an experimental consideration. On that point, as an example, this paper uses a ground including a slope as track in order to show the effectiveness of the disturbance observer. The disturbance observer improves the robustness against a work environment variation.

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Power assist systems have been introduced to reduce workers' load in industrial production. The authors' research group has studied on control systems for realizing power assist systems for conveying flexible structures, and proposed a control system consisting of an impedance controller, the disturbance accommodating optimal controller, a disturbance observer and a reaction force controller. However, power assist control based on unintentional input force may cause reckless motion and severe accident in actual uses. In industrial uses, enable switches are often applied to prevent such a problem. However, the spread of various kinds of power assist systems requires another safety measure. Therefore, this paper presents a controller design method taking account of the influence to conveyed objects by unintentional input force. Concretely, the conveyed objects are set on the active table on the assist system. The table is controlled by the frequency-shaped disturbance accommodating optimal control theory. Abrupt motion of the assist system based on the unintentional input force is prevented by the frequency-shaping property. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulations and experiments for a power assist cart with a linear motor table.

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This paper presents a trajectory planning method for suppressing residual vibrations of a flexible dual-manipulator. To construct the mathematical model of the manipulator system accurately, the parameters of the equations of motion are experimentally identified. In the control technique, we express the joint angle by a cubic spline function, and then use a particle swarm optimization to find an optimal path. The optimal path thus obtained carries a minimum vibration requirement. The suppression of the residual vibrations of the flexible dual-manipulator can be accomplished by rotating the joint angle along the optimal path, that is, the proposed control scheme is a feedforward control that does not require sensors to measure unwanted vibrations. The validity and effectiveness of the proposed vibration control scheme are substantiated by simulation and experimental results.

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Expert skill is needed to operate a crane and transfer load without exciting the load sway. Typical teaching method such as explain verbally is difficult to be understood. Recently, a crane simulator is used to learn operator skill of crane. However, its time of training is no great distinction between a crane simulator and actual crane. In this paper, a simulator capable of shortening the training period of unskilled crane operators is newly built. First, referring to the sway suppression skill taught in crane driving school, sway suppressing control input is derived theoretically. Next, a learning support method that presents haptic and visual sensory information to facilitate acquisition of the sway suppression skill by the unskilled operators is proposed. An experiment was performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed learning support method and the results indicate that proposed method can be beneficial in the training of crane operators.

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This paper presents a modeling approach of shaking-table considering reaction force of a specimen using multi-flexible body simulation. Reaction force generated by resonant vibration of the specimen generally deteriorates the reproducibility of acceleration. In order to simulate behaviors of the shaking system including effects of the reaction force, a multi-flexible body technique is adopted, where the specimen is defined as a flexible component to reproduce the reaction force.Effectiveness of the constructed model is comparatively verified by experiments with numerical simulations.

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In late years the decrease of farmer by aging population combined with the diminishing number of children becomes the problem, and the reduction of the work load by the automatic mechanization of the farming work is demanded Mandarin orange harvest robot need to identify self-location in order to harvest mandarin orange and move by oneself in the farm However, it is difficult to know the exact space position of sensors such as GPS absolutely error occurs The purpose of this study is to correct the space positional information that was obtained with GPS by using the image processing with some targets Therefore at first we perform the choice of the targets We choose the opposite color of the color present in the farm color circle and use it for targets As a result, we proposed technique of the revision of the space position error of the GPS by using targets and image processing.

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This study aims to propose a novel method to determine the fundamental posture of cycling exercise. The authors have been engaged to design an intelligent system and its control method that can find good saddle height against the physical properties of a cyclist. In order to complete our purpose, firstly, the variation of muscular activity statement due to the difference of saddle height has to be quantitatively evaluated. Pattern entropy method that compresses time-series data with focusing on the instability of data is applied to surface electromyography (SEMG) of lower limbs measured under pedaling exercise. Especially, the condition of upper body was added to the experimental conditions, where a subject grasped a handle and kept hand free in sitting up position during cycling exercise. The pattern entropy method indicated the stability of voluntary muscular activity, however this method is not proper to evaluate the variation of muscular activity statement of lower limb muscle to discuss the cycling exercise.

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In this study, we examined an evaluation method of analyze the sit-to-stand movement using the electromyogram (EMG), motion capture and floor reaction force meter. Furthermore, we apply this movement evaluation method to analysis of the power assistive device that installed a pneumatic actuator in the knee part, and we evaluated an assistive effect of the power assist wear. As a result, we showed the possibility that we could obtain the difference of the activity change by having power assist wear or not by using this evaluation system.

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Japanese Barrier-Free Transportation law has brought comfortable life style to a variety of people. Recently,most of buildings and articles of furniture have been designed according to this law. For the recent design of pavement, the color and/or uneven tiles are enhancing the safety of gait space, however there are no numerical conditions in arranging pavement of Barrier-Free Transportation law. Then, this study aims to propose a numerical criterion that is focused on pedestrians' senses in gait motion and aides to design comfortable pedestrian space for people who have several types of gait characteristics. To consider the pedestrian's feelings in gait motion, this study has focused on the mechanism of ankle's joint and surface electiomyography of lower limbs. Both acceleration data around ankle's joint and electromyography of lower limbs are statistically analyzed in this paper.

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Currently, the robot has been active in industrials, nursing and medical care. In order to carry out complicated works, it is necessary to develop a bilateral master-slave system. We designed and developed master equipment using a parallel link mechanism. This study aims to develop the practical force-reflecting with parallel link mechanism. The master equipment has 6 degrees of freedom using six geared actuators with rotary encoders. To control the movement of the tip, the program uses inverse kinematics. We developed the program to compute the angles of all six actuators. This feature is used for a driving device with multi degrees of freedom. In addition, it has strain gauges to obtain force information at the tip We designed and developed to set up slave equipment on the virtual space, and developed the position control and force-reflection control programs Experimental results show that it is possible to control the position and force-reflection at the same time Furthermore we improve the rigidity and accuracy of the equipment and develop the slave equipment

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We are developing the flexible micro manipulator with a haptic force feedback system for the brain surgery. This micro manipulator has 5 degrees of freedom, can approach adequately to the deeply seated brain tumor. When the operator grips a brain tumor using this manipulator, the gripping force is detected by strain gage fit on the gripper clip. In the same way, the force of pulling a tumor could be detected. Those forces are conducted to the operator by force feedback devices on the master manipulator. In this paper, we show the force feedback device and system. And, gripping soft material test showed that both gripping force and pulling force are clearly detected and the operator could feel haptic force through the feedback system.

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Among various medical problems facing us in today's Japan are rapidly aging society, localization of medical doctors, concentrated visits of patients to large hospitals, etc. Development of diagnostic support systems is considered a current pressing solution to help reduce loads on medical doctors. Among various imaging diagnoses, ultrasonography seems most advantageous in terms of lower stresses on patients, compact and less expensive equipment, and greater degrees of freedom in image capture .On the other hand, manipulation of ultrasound probes (hereinafter "probe") requires professional expertise and empirical probing technique to capture echograms of objects and extract necessary information, which depends a great deal on ultrasonographers. Instead, more and more attention is being paid to diagnostic support systems in which probes are manipulated by robots. We have constructed the Diagnosis and Treatment Support Robot System of Echography by Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics Matrix-composite. As a result, CFRP arm weight was about 63% lighter than the aluminum arm.

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