This paper describes an investigation on a difference between human and robot's motion from amplitude of joint angle when the walking of four subjects who simulated hemiplegic patient condition. In the experiment, the subjects wore a knee supporter for restraining bending motion, an additional weight on the upper limb, and a lower thigh on the left side to simulate the condition of a left hemiplegic patient. Then we conducted the 10-meter walking test (10MWT) to the subjects with a wearable robotic system, curara, which supports the wearer's walking on the basis of a synchronization control using neural oscillator. A synchronization gain such as control parameter of curara system was set to 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5. The result showed that the synchronization gain is different for each subjects and also between hip and knee, left and right joints for same subject when difference between human and robot's motion minimized. As the results, we concluded that it is necessary to change synchronization gain in real time to set synchronization gain which minimize difference between human and robot's motion for anybody and any joints.

In this paper, we proposed a stair walking assistance method using "robotic wear curara", and verified the effect upon reducing an exercise load by using curara on elderly person. In the experiment, a heart rate (HR) was measured with the HR measurable GPS watch (fenix5S: Garmin) during stair walk with or without curara. The HR, the %HRR of exercise intensity calculated from HR by Karvonen Fomula, and the rate of perceived exertion (RPE) using Borg scale, were used to evaluate exercise load during stair walk of two elderly subjects, and compared between stair walks with assistance (With Assistance) and without assistance (Without Assistance). As a result, the mean HR and %HRR at the condition of With Assistance decreased by 10% and 30% than No Assistance, respectively for one subject. And values of Borg scale decreased in several conditions. Based on the above results we found the possibility that the walking assistance decreased the exercise load in stair walk.

This paper describes an investigation on walking support of coordinated motion between upper and lower limbs during walking. In the first experiment, walking velocity, stride length, cadence, and the harmonic ratio (HR) were used to evaluate the gait variables and walking smoothness of the subjects who simulated a hemiplegic patient’s conditions in upper limb. In the secondary experiment, we conducted the walking assistance test to the subject with the wearable robot called “curara”, which assists their upper and lower limbs based on a synchronization control using neural oscillator. The subjects wore a knee supporter and an additional weight on right lower thigh, and restrained right arm to simulate the conditions of hemiplegic patient. The results suggested that the HR in vertical direction increased compared with only lower limbs assists when the system supported the upper and lower limbs during walking assist. In conclusion, we clarified the gait characteristic based on gait analysis of the simulated hemiplegia patients, and verified the change of walking characteristics by walking support in upper and lower limbs through walking experiments.

Penguins are wing-propelled diving birds capable of agile maneuvers such as rapid turning and rapid acceleration. Previous bio-logging studies and 2-D motion analysis studies revealed basic swimming motions such as average speed, dive depth, and flapping frequency. However, little study has been done on details of 3-D wing motions. Therefore, hydrodynamic mechanism of penguins’ maneuver is still unknown. In this paper, we conducted 3-D motion measurement of swimming penguins at an aquarium using multiple waterproof video cameras. Then the wing kinematics such as stroke angle, sweepback angle and attack of angle were analyzed using the synchronized images obtained by the cameras. The fluid dynamic force acting on the penguin was deduced from the equation of motion. We also calculated the fluid dynamic force based on quasi-steady blade element theory based on lift and drag coefficients of the wing which were obtained from computational fluid dynamics simulations. As a result, the penguin accelerated forward both during upstroke and downstroke, and the fluid dynamic force in the forward direction from the quasi-steady calculation came short to match the force deduced from the equation of motion, suggesting presence of unsteady effect of the flapping wings.

Hummingbirds have been considered as promising models for future micro aerial robots because they have excellent flight ability such as sustained hovering and agile maneuvers. Hummingbird wings are mainly composed of flight feathers which deforms during their flapping flight. In this study, we measured flexural stiffness of the flight feathers using museum specimen of two hummingbirds and other two small birds. Then, artificial wings were fabricated based on the measurement results and tested using an electric mechanical flapper to investigate the effect of the flexural stiffness on the lift generation. It was found that the flexural stiffness of the inner feathers was smaller than those of the outer feathers in the hummingbirds, which was not the case with the other two birds. The artificial wings were created by bonding radially-cutout CFRP plate modeling the feathers onto polyimide films. Two different wing designs were compared: One mimicked the flexural stiffness of the hummingbirds where the inner CFRP frames were less stiff than outer CFRP frames, while the other did not have such stiffness variation. As a result, the mimic wing twisted more than the other wing, leading to higher lift and lower power consumption.

We tried to elucidate the mechanism of a blood sucking of a female mosquito using her needle, and the role of the mosquito's labium which is the sheath wrapped around its needles. Using an inverted microscope, we successfully observed the moment when a mosquito inserted its needle into a mouse skin. As a result, it was observed that the mosquito twisted the labium when she inserts her needle to the mouse skin. In addition, it was observed that the mosquito's needle hardly distorts the skin and blood vessels of the mouse.

In order to utilize the results to development of a low invasive microneedle, we tried to clarify the mechanism of puncturing motion of mosquito's needle into the animal's skin and blood vessels. We established an observation system for puncturing motion of a mosquito's needle to blood vessel and its blood sucking motion using a high-speed camera, an inverted microscope, and a half-incubated egg. As a result, we succeeded in elucidating how the mosquito insert blood vessel and suck blood.

There is a need for minimally invasive medical needles that can reduce the pain during insertion. However, to develop such a fine needle, it is necessary to evaluate the resistance force during needle insertion. In this study, we conducted an experiment to puncture microneedle into artificial skin and a nonlinear finite element method analysis using LS-DYNA, and evaluated the resistance force when microneedles were punctured into a model imitating artificial skin. At this time, the analysis result was directly compared with the experimental result by conducting analysis under conditions reproducing material physical properties of artificial skin, needle shape, diameter, puncture speed and the like used for puncture experiment.

In this laboratory, we focus on the fact that there is no pain even if it is bitten by a mosquito, and we are developing plastic microneedles that mimic mosquito needles. In past research, microneedles with a length of 1.5 mm, an outer diameter of 100 μm, and an inner diameter of 50 μm were prepared and a nude mouse was punctured. However, when the microneedle was punctured into a nude mouse, the skin flexed greatly due to the flexibility of the skin, and the microneedle did not get stuck. And eccentric load acted on the microneedle due to deflection of the skin and the microneedle buckled. Therefore, in this paper, we attached a needle to the buckling prevention mechanism and skin depression prevention mechanism. A needle incorporating these two mechanisms was punctured into a nude mouse, and the usefulness of each mechanism and the aspiration amount of blood were evaluated.

We have developed a measuring device to quantitatively detect the mobility of the ossicles in the middle ear. The quantitative assessment of the ossicular mobility is an important factor for determination of surgical strategy. The device provides information of the ossicular mobility to surgeons by applying the displacement to the ossicles and measuring the reaction force from them. Up to now, we have adopted a mechanism in which a force sensor is serially coupled with an actuator to measure the mobility of the ossicles. However, the mechanism is so large that it restricts the design of the measuring device. Therefore, we developed a new downsized mechanism by integrating the force sensor into the actuator. In this paper, we evaluated the characteristics of the new mechanism and developed a method to detect the micro force from the output of the integrated force sensor.

With the rapid development of e-commerce industry, a few of logistics companies consider automatic sorting as the development goals in future. However, robot hands, such as robotic grippers and vacuum grippers, do not have adaptability to objects with different sizes and shapes. In this study, by imitating the opening and closing of the tree frog's palm so that it can stably stand on inclined planes with different angles, a three-claw robot hand with vacuum suction cups on its tips is proposed. It has the characteristics of easy control, low-cost, adapting to diverse objects with three grip models; first is opening fingers for a large flat object with sucking, second is closing fingers for a small object with sucking, third is gripping a curve object without sucking. The feasibility of this design is verified by computer simulation. A prototype of proposed robot hand was fabricated by 3D printing and machine tools.

The purpose of this study was to explore the surface micromachining, which is a precision mechanical material removal process, as an alternative to nanoimprint, which creates a bio-inspiration surface such as lotus leaves and moth eyes on artificial materials. We measured and discussed the evaluation of the created structure and the change of the contact angle of water. In this research, glass was used as a material of artificial material. The following method was proposed as a method for manufacturing a bio-inspired surface. Initially, photoresist is coated to the glass surface. Ultraviolet rays were irradiated through a photomask. The non-irradiated portion was removed, and the resist pattern irradiated with ultraviolet rays remained. Next, the resist pattern and the glass exposed to the atmosphere were simultaneously removed by a micro slurry-jet. The micro slurry-jet is a mechanical removal processing which is alumina particles are dispersed in a large amount of water is sprayed on the material surface with compressed air. After processing, the contact angle was measured by the droplet method, evaluated with an average value of 10 points. By processing method, it was possible to make convex glass pattern of micro order with continuous smooth surface. Glass after processing showed higher contact angle than normal glass. It is considered that the contact area between the water droplet and the glass decreased and the surface tension of the water droplet worked.

We are developing a device to search for peptides that specifically bind to cancer cells targeting spheroids. The goal of our study is fully automatic search and this paper proposes a control method necessary for fully automatic search. There are two purposes for control of a droplet: One is droplet generation and the other is position control to stop a droplet at a predetermined position. The model parameters vary depending on conditions. We propose a cascade control method using not only a position sensor but also a pressure sensor, which is not affected by model variation.

We aim to develop the label-free diamagnetic cell patterning system by magnetic scanning which based on the magneto-Archimedes effect. By adding the paramagnetic compound to the fluorescent beads suspension, fluorescent beads were pushed away from the trajectory of a magnet. Based on this method, the system is able to pattern the micro particles including cells by magnetic scanning. In this study, we patterned the fluorescent beads on the substrate and examined to control the size of the patterned fluorescent beads area where the fluorescent beads were removed. The patterned area was determined by image analysis. As a result, the fluorescent beads above the magnet were pushed away by diamagnetic force and patterned in the circular shape on the bottom of the chamber. As the magnet became wider or approached the bottom of the chamber, the patterned area enlarged. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated that diameter and position of the magnet affected the size of the patterned area.

The studies to utilize muscle cells and tissues as microactuators have attracted much attentions due to their advantages such as high energy conversion efficiency and high biocompatibility. However, muscle tissues have only a contractile ability and their contractile force is smaller than the ones of artificial actuators. In order to utilize muscles as versatile actuators, a mechanism to convert muscle contractions into rotational motion should be useful. In this study, we propose the linear-rotary motion conversion mechanism which was able to be driven tissue-engineered skeletal muscle gels. First, we developed the automatic culturing system for the muscle gels, which automatically exchanged medium and applied arbitrary electrical stimulation. The muscle gels were fabricated by culturing mouse myoblast C2C12 cells in collagen gels. Then, we designed and fabricated the conversion mechanism based on the friction force. The mechanism consisted of a cross shaped frame and a pentagonal structure. The frame moves on a square-shaped trajectory pulled by four muscle gels, those are stimulated electrically with a delay in turn. The movement of the frame generates friction between the frame and the apexes of the pentagonal structure. As a result, the pentagonal structure will rotate. Finally, we verified that the mechanism was operable by moving the frame manually.

Recently, there has been growing interests in biomimetics. In order to elucidate the mechanism of insect movement, it is necessary to measure extremely small and distributed force given by insects against the contacting object surface. In this paper, A distributed force sensor made of transparent flexible film is proposed. A transparent hydrogel mainly composed of agarose is used for measurement of applied distributed force, on the surface of which a grid pattern made of red colored agarose hydrogel was inscribed. The pitch of the grid pattern are 50 μm. The Young's modulus of the hydrogel was measured to be approximately 2 kPa. It was successfully detected distributed force with approximately 10 μN resolution by combination of the measurement using the hydrogel with grid pattern and an FEM analysis.

This paper describes the effect of suction cup with bioinspired microstructure on suction force and self-adhesive force. The suction cups generate the negative pressure by deforming a membrane. Moreover, the suction cups have the grooves imitating octopus and pentagonal projections imitating lumpfish. It has been reported that the adhesiveness was increased by these microstructures on suction cup of aquatic organisms. The measured suction force was range from 50 to 60 N. The suction force was increased using suction cup with microstructure. The contact area between object and suction cup with microstructure was low. The contact area was lower, the suction force was higher. The measured selfadhesive force was range from 4 to 6 N. The self-adhesive force was decreased using the suction cup with microstructure, because of the low contact area. However, the peeling time was longest using the suction cup with circular grooves. The negative pressure was generated in the grooves by pressing suction cup.

In this report, in order to prepare adhesion mechanism that imitated gecko, we worked on the fabrication of fine hair using 3D stereolithography equipment and AAO . We succeeded in actually fabricating nano-sized fine hair and two layer structure. We measured adhesion fine hair produced. In the measurement method, fine hair was attracted to the film of Parylene and it was pulled to bend the film, and the adhesion force was evaluated from the amount of deflection. Fine hair having a two-layer structure showed adhesion power, and it was confirmed that the mechanism of gecko was effective in adhesion of Van der Waals force.

Micro-bellows spring which can be deformed by minute force was fabricated using three-dimensional laser stereo lithography system. The size of spring was as follows; natural length: 450 μm, bellows diameter: 250 μm, thickness: 8 μm. Aluminum thin film (thickness: 0.5 μm) was deposited on the surface of spring by DC sputtering. The resistance change of the aluminum thin film caused by compressing the spring was measured and properties of it for tactile sensor were evaluated. The spring was compressed by pressing it to the copper plate using a precision stage equipped with micrometer. As a result, the resistance was changed in response to the deformation of spring.

In this study, a high-resolution microstereolithography system using a blue laser has been developed and used for producing several kinds of 3D microstructures such as microneeles and microchannels. To realize high-speed, high-resolution 3D microfabrication, two types of photopolymers were developed. One is a resin mixed with an ultraviolet (UV) absorber. This resin is suitable for high-speed fabrication of a high-aspect-ratio structure. The other is a resin mixed with a blue light absorber, which is suitable for fabricating a model having a complicated 3D shape. It was demonstrated that the resin containg the UV absorber could provide ultrafine line structure whose linewidth was around 3 μm. The resin was also used for making a high-aspect-ratio microneedle with a lenth of 2 mm in a short time. The resin containing the blue light absorber was utilized for making a 3D microchannel. The flexible 3D fabrication using two kinds of photopolymers in the microstereolithography system using the blue laser will be a powerful tool for various kinds of applications such as lab-on-a-chip, microelectronics and medicine.

This paper reports successful measurement of event-related potential (ERP) using candle-like dry microneedle electrodes, which can measure high-quality electroencephalogram (EEG) from hairy parts without the conventional skin preparation. In our previous work, we proved that the electrode could measure EEG from hairy part as the conventional wet electrode, and we deduced spontaneous EEG indices to represent the mental fatigue state of the participants. But we haven't measure ERP. So, in this work, we measured ERP by oddball tasks, from hairy parts using this electrode. As a result, P300 was detected with candle-like dry microneedle electrode as wet electrode. And this electrode observed the recognitions, which could be observed using magnetoencephalography (MEG), Near infra-red spectroscopy (NIRS). Based on these results, we found that CME which doesn't need any preparation, can be applicable in cognitive neuroscience research with ERP.

Many fabrication methods have been applied to the fabrication of microneedles made of usual polymer materials ; however, thermal nanoimprint fabrication of biodegradable polymer microneedles have not been researched. Since the nanoimprint fabrication method has high productivity and fine formability, basic study of applying this method to biodegradable microneedle fabrication should be worthwhile. No researchers have researched about the fabrication of microneedle by thermal imprint. Therefore, basic study should be started. Ni mold was fabricated by Ni electro-forming for the mold in imprint process. We had researched about the pressing force and temperature at pressing. As the results, 20 MPa of pressing force and 160°C of temperature at pressing under atmospheric pressure are applied for fine formability.

Currently, the number of patients with severe chronic kidney disease in Japan exceeds 320,000. Most of these patients goes to the hospital three times a week and must receive about 4 hours of dialysis treatment every time. Therefore, we aim to develop an implantable dialysis system that uses a MEMS technology to make the dialysis system smaller and simpler. In this process, long-term in vivo experiments with small animals are advantageous, but at that time, blood coagulation management becomes a problem. Therefore, in this paper, the appropriate dose of heparin was quantitatively evaluated from the viewpoint of APTT by in vivo experiments using rats. It was confirmed that the half-life of heparin in the rat body was about 15 minutes. Also, the patency of microfluidic channel of devices were confirmed up to 72 h by administering heparin in device connection experiment using rats in anesthesia arousal state.

We have developed a small generator (VEH) that generates electricity by vibration. A material called an electret that maintains a constant surface potential is used for this VEH. However, if this potential is too high, there arises a problem that the movable electrode and the electret are affixed by the electrostatic attraction force and power generation is hindered. In order to solve this problem, we applied a micrometer class texture to the electret surface. As a result, it is possible to obtain three advantages such as reduction of electret sticking force, improvement of surface potential, improvement in power generation amount, and power generation amount of 14 μW is confirmed against vibration of acceleration 0.2 g.

Recently, electrostatic-type vibration energy harvesting (VEH) has attracted much attention. However, the matching impedance of VEH is much higher than that of a sensor circuit. As a result, the transfer efficiency of generated electrical energy from VEH to the load circuit is low. In order to solve this problem, new method that can improve the transfer efficiency of electrical energy generated by the VEH by reducing its internal impedance was studied.

When the movement-assist type rehabilitation robot operation, the disturbance caused by a paralyzed part has often strong nonlinearity. In this study, we focused on the passive velocity field control (PVFC) which uses a velocity field for track following and keeps the passivity of the system. The PVFC controlled system tracks following the pre-designed velocity field when the disturbance not exists, but when the disturbance occurs the system stops following because of the passivity. However, normal PVFC easily stops even if a small disturbance force, therefore in this paper, we added a torque assistance term for preventing the disturbance to the PVFC controller. Using this method, the PVFC only works when the disturbance torque over the setting value. The feasibility of the proposed method for a rehabilitation robot was shown by the experiment.

This paper proposes a method for inducing drivers’ spatial attention by presenting visual stimulation in their peripheral visual field. Computer-generated images of forward driving scenes were projected on a screen 6 m in width, 1.8 m in height and with a 140° viewing angle. Their detection time of the visual stimulation in their central visual field was measured when visual stimulation was presented 1-5 s in advance on the right and left sides of their peripheral visual field in a viewing angle range of 10°to 40°. By varying the viewing angle at which the preceding stimulation was presented in the peripheral visual field and the time interval between the presentation of the preceding stimulation and the detected stimulation in the central visual field, conditions were found for assisting prompt detection of the latter visual stimulation.

In this paper, a “learning by observation” method, which is most commonly employed in motion learning, is examined. In the observation-based learning method, learners normally observe, recognize, and reproduce an avatar-performed reference motions only from one direction. The learners can observe the avatar from various directions: the orientation of the avatar’s trunk doesn’t accord with that of the learners when viewing from a direction other than from behind the avatar. It prevents the learners from learning the avatar’s reference motions easily because the learners need to rotate the avatar mentally (it is called the “mental rotation”). On the other hand, when viewing from behind the avatar in order to avoid the mental rotation cost, they occasionally encounter occlusion problem. Therefore, we have studied perceptual characteristics of various observation views through a psychophysical experiment. Two kinds of physical values were employed for evaluating learner’s responses. One is the delayed time of motion onset, and the other is the error rate of motion direction. The results suggest that the perception suffers ill-effects from the mental rotation in two ways: the amount of the mental rotation increases the delayed time, and the presence of the mental rotation causes the directional errors.

Tactile VR (i.e. Haptics) that enables presentation of texture sensation is expected to be applied in medical and engineering fields. Several commodities are already developed in visual and auditory VR, while haptics has not been progressed due to the difficulty of developing a presentation device to generate texture feeling on skin. Therefore, in this research, we focus on the tactile illusion phenomenon (Velvet Hand Illusion; VHI) as a method of presenting the texture sensation to progress haptics. In VHI, we can feel the smooth sensation between hands when we sandwich the two parallel stretched wires which move back and forth between hands. We can also feel VHI by a dot-matrix display which is equipped with two refreshable braille displays. We conducted two series of psychophysical experiments to clarify the stimulation conditions to generate VHI with the dot-matrix display. First, we identified that VHI hardly occurred when the interval between stimulus pins forming lines was closer than a two-point threshold. Second, it was clarified that the line sensation is an essential condition for VHI and that a line length of 29 mm is the absolute threshold of VHI.

In recent years, haptic devices have been studied for motor learning such as for sports. Learners ordinarily recognize target movements forcibly moved by haptic devices and reproduce the target movements. The kind of learning framework is called “passive learning”. It is an important ability to reproduce the target movements as same as is instructed. In sports, it is also important to perform movements as is adaptively planned by learners themselves. In this paper, we carry out a preliminary study of an effect of haptic guidance on hand-moving speed learning task. As a result, in the hand-moving speed learning, the haptic teaching was as good as visual teaching that is generally said to be dominantly powerful in motor learning.

Reduction of clamping force of bolted joints causes a self-loosening and fatigue failure. Hence it is very important to measure not only mechanical force but also bending moment that tightened bolts receiving for prevention of self-loosening and fatigue fracture. We have developed a washer sensor that enables detection of clamping force and the bending moment of the bolted joints in service. It was seen that the developed washer sensor can measure not only the mechanical force and bending moment that bolts are receiving but also the direction and magnitudes of the external force that the bolted joints receiving.

This paper describes the joint angle estimation method focused on the characteristics of surface electromyogram (sEMG) for increasing the degrees-of-freedom (DoF) of the myoelectric hand. A pulse density of the motor neurons obtained from sEMG increases with increasing a joint angle of the finger, however, the characteristics are also changed by joint angle statuses such as moving or stopping and moving speed. Even an online experiment, we could judge weather fingers were moving or stopping from the pulse densities of flexor and extensor muscles. Therefore, we proposed a finger angle estimation method which employs different temporal filters, which were changed the cut-off frequencies setting to 0.07 Hz, 0.15 Hz, and 0.12 Hz, for each movement status such as bending, rest and others. This method improved the responsiveness during the bending 67% and the smoothness during the stopping 21% than conventional methods. In addition, we moved the robot hand by an online estimated finger joint angle.

Age-related balance disorder is a major risk of fall and injury. These elderlies tend to keep balance using Hip strategy, and this postural control strategy is contributed to decrease of specific leg muscle's activities and movement of ankle angles. Therefore, we proposed a new type balance training system, which consists of two movable plates, and developed a prototype device as a preliminary study. In this study, in order to evaluate this prototype system, we carried out experiment in healthy person. As a result, we got the knowledge of decrease of the hip angles after using of prototype system. This result indicates that prototype system is effective for people who tend to use hip strategy.

This paper presents a method of automatically connect the wheelchair with the traveling support robot for usual manual wheelchair. This robot has been developing for a purpose of reducing burden on caregivers. In order to use this robot, caregivers or wheelchair users have to move the wheelchair closer to robot and manually connect. Therefore, we aim to implement the function that the robot automatically moves to the position where it can be connected with the wheelchair. In this paper, for planning robot movement route to handle an arbitrarily located wheelchair, we propose a method to estimate the posture and handle position of a wheelchair by using a vision sensor mounted on the robot. Also we propose a control method for moving the robot toward the rear of the wheelchair using three-dimensional interpolation curve.

We have analyzed logistic work for the productivity improvement system. To solve the problem of a worker shortage, we tried to extract some work of which work efficiency got better with experience, as beginners at logistic work could get prior education to these work. Based on the hypothesis that the more experience workers had, the smaller dispersion of working time and motion of workers became, we defined time statistic and moving statistic coming from acceleration data of the sensors on the workers' wrists. The amount of data was over 8,000 samples collected from sixteen subjects. We have developed correlation analysis between time / moving statistics and experience value defined by workers' service years and rate of their all work of logistic work. The correlation analysis has picked out some work which correlated highly with experience. We have confirmed that these work had enough flexibility and needed skills. The result of our experiment shows that work analysis framework focused on the dispersion of both working time and motion is effective to select work that have plenty of room to improve.

For hospitals with a large number of outpatients per day, we conduct a primary screening of the outpatient falling risk using deep learning at medical treatment and discriminate high-risk patients. Moreover, we propose a nursing assist system that prevents fall accidents by risk assessment of the state of patients who change every moment, hospital equipment situation in real time, forecasting accidents, and warning patients and medical staff. The medical staff grasps through the wearable device such as the smart glass or the mobile terminal so that other patients with protection of personal information as following: the screening result, the treatment condition of the patient described in the electronic medical record, and the current risk level.

In this study, we focus on the inhalation therapy for bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to study an inhalation device for pMDI (pressurized metered-dose inhaler). There are reports that the patient cannot inhale well because the inhalation therapy is technically difficult to inhale. So we mounted a differential pressure sensor on the inhalation device to monitor the inhalation situation of the patient, thereby studying the guidance of correct inhalation method and its application to the inhalation therapy. Since the user can check the inhalation situation in real time, it was easy to obtain the appropriate inhalation rate. Based on the obtained data on inhalation rate and inhalation volume, medical staff could grasp the patient's respiratory status and the number of times of inhalation therapies.

In recent years, personal mobility vehicles (PMVs) have been developed. PMVs have various types, such as an inverted pendulum type vehicle, a four-wheel sitting type vehicle, a four-wheel stand-up type vehicle and so on. In this study, we focus on a four-wheel stand-up type vehicle because of its static stability, its compact size and its easiness to ride. In this study, we aim to enhance the safety of a PMV by using driving support systems, for example, automatic braking and self-driving. However, a driver has a possibility to fall down due to driver's behavior or a method of driving support. It is because the mass of a driver is comparatively larger than that of a PMV. In this study, we carried out the deceleration experiments to confirm the behavior of the driver, 1: intentional brake by himself, 2: brake by driving support system. As a result, it was found that the driver's behaviors under the condition 1 and 2 are significantly different.

In SAE J3016 autonomous level 3 (conditional driving automation), the driver must monitor the system, and in case of a system error, the transition to manual driving must be performed. However, it is unknown for general drivers whether it is possible to drive properly under such circumstances. In this study, we conduct a driving simulator experiment to observe the behavior of the driver when the transition to manual. In the experiment, we simulate a situation where the system error occurres in the autonomous vehicle for some reasons and the authority of driving have to be transferred to the driver. The system error occurs when the autonomous vehicle running on a curved road of highway at 100 km/h. Then, if the driver does not operate, the car collides with the preceding vehicle or the curb road. From the experiment data, we analyze the characteristics of the transition to manual due to the system error, and propose the cause of the problem.