The effects of homogeneous low voltage electron beam irradiation (HLEBI) on the adhesive force of peeling (F_p) and adhesive force of tensile shear strength (τ_B) of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) / Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) laminated sheet was investigated. 0.30 MGy-HLEBI enhanced the F_p and τ_B . They were more than 4.4 And 2.8 times larger than those before treatment [1]. When HLEBI cut the chemical bonds and generated active terminated atoms with dangling bonds at cross-linked PDMS and PTFE polymers, strengthening the adhesion force of cross-linking polymers was induced by the chemical bonding and intermolecular attractive force of cross-linking plymers.

View full abstract

Although carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic polymers (CFRTPs) for aerospace structural materials have been developed to improve the productivity with cost reduction for mass production, it is serious problem of strength deterioration during solidification process. In order to improve the resistance to pull out fibers from thermoplastic polymers matrix, homogeneous electron beam irradiation (HLEBI) for extremely short time was performed. It increased not only the surface energy, but also wettability. Consequently, 100 keV class HLEBI with 0.30 MGy improved the impact value of CFRTPs.

View full abstract

Since the nickel (Ni) coating on carbon fibers (CF: 7μm-diameter) prevented carbide formation and enhanced the ability of fiber wrapping by molten metal, a new method with extremely large friction force by broad interface of Ni coated CF was developed for Metal/Epoxy-CFRP joints with and without carbon fiber reinforcement (CFR). The CFR enhanced not only the tensile strength, but also the safety level of reliability remarkably. The σ_b and ε_b of Ti/NiCF/CFRP(Epoxy) are approximately three times higher than those of Ti/NiCF/CFRP(ABS). It could be explained, when the resistance to fiber pull out of Epoxy/CF is much higher than that of ABS/CF. Consequently, the new joint method by using carbon fiber remarkably enhanced the safety level with lightweight and high resistance to fracture of Ti/NiCF/CFRP(Epoxy) and Ti/NiCF/CFRP(ABS) utilized for airplanes and automobiles, respectively.

View full abstract

In flying insects, dragonfly has especially high flight performances which are high speed flying, hovering, turn sharp, and so on. However, dragonfly flight mechanisms has been incompletely understood. This report shows that measurement of pressure distribution over surface of test wings which mimic dragonfly's hind-wing shape with air pressure sensors. The pressure over the surface were measured through a hole which was into the wing with external air pressure sensors at outside of wind tunnel. The pressure over the surface were measured at total 7 positions and at an air velocity of 2.85 [m/S] (Re=3000) by changing the angle of attack. As the result of measurement, the pressure distribution over the surface make difference depending on 7 measurement positions.

View full abstract

Dragonfly flight is one of the best models of small air craft called Micro Air Vehicle (MAV). For development of dragonfly-like MAV, the deformation characteristics of wings are important. Dragonfly wing is easy to be passively deformed in the tip side from the nodus, and thereby, aerodynamic force is generated effectively. In this study, aerodynamic characteristics of flexible wing like a dragonfly wing was investigated in both gliding flight and flapping flight using fluid-structure interaction analysis. In this analysis, nodus wing model that is deformed in the tip side are used as flexible wing. As a result, in case of gliding flight, the lift coefficient of the nodus wing was lower in low-angle of attack and was higher in high-angle of attack compared to inflexible wing. Therefore, flexible wing is less suitable for the gliding flight than inflexible wing because gliding flight is low-angle of attack usually. In case of flapping flight, the nodus wing made drag forces generated during downstroke lower compared with inflexible wing. On the other hand, thrust forces generated during upstroke were the same in both wings. Therefore, flexible wing is more suitable for flapping flight than inflexible wing. The wings of dragonfly-like MAV need to appropriate level of flexibility.

View full abstract

Dragonflies have high flight performance in spite of small-size and can do many types of flight. Therefore, dragonflies are one of the best models for designing of micro air vehicle (MAV). Previous studies have shown that vortexes are important for the flight of insects including dragonflies. However, the effect of vortexes on aerodynamic forces is not clarified quantitatively. This study is focused on vorticity around flapping wing. In this study, vorticity and circulation around flapping wing are investigated with a particle image velocimetry. Then, lift force are calculated from the circulation on the basis of Kutta-Joukowski theorem, and is compared with experimental values. As a result, the vorticity and circulation varied with the flapping angle. The lift force was generated when the clockwise circulation was generated, and the thrust force was generated when the anticlockwise circulation was generated. During downstroke, lift force calculated by Kutta-Joukowski theorem were about 40 percent of the experimental value. In contrast, during upstroke, thrust force calculated were about 80 percent of the experimental value. It is suspected that the dragonfly flight uses the vortexes around wings in upstroke particularly.

View full abstract

Built-up edge (BUE) formation in machining maintains a profound effect on the cutting operation, such as cutting forces, cutting temperatures, tool wear, tool life, cutting vibration, surface roughness and the geometric dimensions of machined products and so on. Recently, attempts have been made to use the BUE as the tool cutting edge/wedge to optimize machining, extend the tool life and so on. In order to have a clearly understanding of BUE evolution, cutting experiments were performed on aluminum alloy A6063-T6 and low carbide steel SM490A using the cemented carbide tool over a wide range of cutting speeds. The cutting speed of BUE formation spans just a small range of the cutting speed under low cutting speed and disappears with increasing the cutting speed, which is found to be ascribed to the decrease of cutting force and thermal softening effect that caused by increasing cutting speed. Further microscopic observations reveal that the plastic shear and shear rate of secondary shear zone is significantly related to the formation of BUE which increases with increasing the cutting speed. Since the chip compression ratio is an important parameter to characterize the chip plastic deformation, the relationship between the chip compression ratio and evolution of BUE is considered. In this work, a new theoretical damage model is developed to predict the evolution of BUE formation, in which the reduction of material properties due to the thermal diffusion had been considered. And the model validation is performed by comparing the experimental results with the simulations for aluminum alloy A6063-T6 and low carbide steel SM490A, which clearly show that the proposed damage model is able to predict the periodic evolution of BUE. Not only the cycle time can be predicted, but also it makes a more clearly understanding of the evolution of BUE formation mechanism and its effects.

View full abstract

In this paper, already developed robotic CAM system is extended for removal machining using a ball-end mill in order to efficiently remove cusp marks along free-formed surface. The extended robotic CAM system can online generate small vibrational motion orthogonally along original CL data such as zigzag path and spiral path. A small-sized industrial robot Mitsubishi RV1A incorporated with the extended robotic CAM is applied to the machining process of foamed polystyrene materials with curved surface. The machining ability is evaluated with respect to the surface quality after machining. The implementation and machining results are shown.

View full abstract

The iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm is a famous registration method that minimizes norms of difference vectors between two point clouds. ICP algorithm has widely applications. Thus, many researchers studied this algorithm. Recently, we see laser-scanned point cloud data in various fields. We call a point cloud target one, another point cloud source one respectively. The ICP algorithm calculates a rotation matrix and a translation vector from the former to the latter. The ICP must decide corresponding points of subset of target points. If both point clouds are noisy, the subset choose wrong corresponding points. We use locally fitted quadratic surfaces in order to get better corresponding points, which is effective. Hough transform is an algorithm to extract a feature curve in image analysis, computer vision, digital image processing. Hough transform uses voting procedure in parameter space to find certain classes of shapes that approximate noisy instances. In order to reduce noises, we project points to locally fitted quadratic surfaces estimated from Hough transform before ICP algorithm. As a result, we can calculate the transformation from ICP algorithm for noise reduced source/target point clouds. Hough transform is a robust algorithm. Thus obtained difference vectors are stable. Furthermore, precision of registration is better than those with original noisy point clouds.

View full abstract

It is important for product designer and material designer to forecast the performance and nature of the designing product by computer simulation in the early stage of design process. Multi-scale product design system is designed for the design of the product including nano/micro scale designed structure. Multi-scale product design system is a model and a container of physical space of product or material. A prototype of multi-scale product design system is implemented using MPI-2.

View full abstract

Morphology and crystal structure of a GaN layer on a patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) and a planar sapphire substrate at initial growth stage were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). An as-deposited GaN buffer layer deposited at low temperature (LT-GaN) on the both substrates exhibited coalesced pyramidal-shaped grains with highly defective stacking faults (SFs). The GaN islands on the both substrates were formed by annealing and the initial growth of GaN layers was performed at high temperature. In contrast to the planar substrate, the adjacent region to the sidewall in the bottom has atomic steps with nanometer-order spacing. Threading dislocations (TDs) thought to be due to dissociation of partial dislocations were observed in upper part of the GaN layer grown at high temperature (HT-GaN) on the planar sapphire substrate. On the other hand, a TD resulting from coalescence of inclined grains of the as-deposited LT-GaN caused by the atomic step was observed in the HT-GaN layer on the adjacent region to the sidewall in the bottom of the PSS.

View full abstract

This study investigates the slurry flow behavior in sapphire- chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) in order to further improve the removal rate. In particular, as mentioned previous our study, we clarified the linear velocity ratio, defined as the ratio of slurry flow velocity to pad linear velocity, is remarkably effect on the removal rate. In this paper, the scientifically effect of the linear velocity ratio is discussed from the viewpoints of the type of slurry and the retainer ring. As a result, the linear velocity ratio is effective parameter for considering the CMP mechanism. Further, the removal rate is stable when the retainer ring is used during CMP.

View full abstract

This study aims to improve the productivity of the next generation semiconductor substrates such as SiC and GaN through reduction of process steps and production cost, and consequently aims to contribute to the wide-spread usage of green devices. In this study, we have developed the world's first polishing pad which is sensitive to process conditions by using a dilatancy phenomenon of a special viscoelastic material. We also developed a high-speed, high-pressure processing machine which can achieve high efficiency polishing of hard-to-process materials. Combination use of the developed polishing pad (Dilatancy pad^<TM>) and the developed processing equipment (SLM-140H : Fujikoshi Machinery Corp.) has made it possible to reduce the total processing time to below one tenth of conventional processing time, which is typically required for the conventional device fabrications. This polishing process could achieve high-efficiency and high-quality simultaneously, which are often in a trade-off relationship in the conventional process. Since a significant reduction of the manufacturing cost is anticipated (operating cost of the processing machine, slurry consumption, etc.), we hope this polishing process can contribute to the productivity improvement of the next generation semiconductor devices and the realization of an environmentally friendly society.

View full abstract

An Innovation in chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is achieved and reported; the conventional CMP processing is combined with plasma chemical vaporization machining (P-CVM) technology for the first time in the world, which is named "plasma fusion CMP", to obtain synergic effects by CMP and P-CVM for the realization of high efficiency surface treatment of hard-to-process materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) substrate. In this study, two kinds of processing method, CMP and plasma fusion CMP were compared in the processing experiments of hard-to-process material substrate. As a result from this experiment it has been confirmed that plasma fusion CMP can create smooth surface of substrate in smaller processing amount than CMP. These results indicate that our developed plasma fusion CMP can achieve high-efficiency and excellent planarization processing of hard-to-process material more effectively than conventional process. We think that this plasma fusion CMP can be applied for processing of diamond substrate.

View full abstract

A novel planarization method that combines the mechanical polishing and atmospheric-pressure plasma etching has been proposed. A prototype apparatus was developed, and a SiC substrate with mesa structures, which preliminarily form through plasma etching, was successfully planarized.

View full abstract

Intelligent neck cooler has been proposed as an energy-saving indoor air-conditioning method by direct cooling of human body. This paper reports evaluation results of intelligent neck cooler's effectiveness regarding labor productivity and comfort in hot summer office environment. We studied through trial subjects how neck cooling affects psychology and physiology in summer heat environment. Higher comfort level and cooler hyperthermic were reported in long lasting tasks when performing neck cooling were demonstrated. These were also confirmed by better physiological response concerning sweat amount and heart rate variability.

View full abstract

This abstract summarized the reported research work on the high-performance triboelectric nanogenrator (TENG) for wearable electronics. The requirement of TENG for wearable electronics was illustrated firstly, and then the developing tendency of flexible TENGs was figured out. Based on both the above analysis and reviewing the latest publications, the recent progress of TENG for wearable electronics was summarized, which shows an attractive future to realize the fully-integrated self-powered wearable electronic systems.

View full abstract

A three-dimensional finite element model is developed to study the residual magnetic field (RMF) of underground pipe with corrosion damages, which is modeled as a hole. The effect of damage size and burried depth of the pipe on the residual magnetic field is determined. The results show that the radial and axial components of the RMF signal are strong functions of damage size and burried depth of the pipe.

View full abstract

We have developed a finger-mounted tactile sensor, which employs the user's finger as the sensing probe, for evaluating roughness on curved surface and small product surface as well as flat surface. The sensor detects skin vibrations and sound generated by the mechanical interaction between the user's finger and the object surface. This paper presents the influence of contact force and scanning velocity on the sensor output. The experimental results show that the sensor output increased with a rise in the contact force but the influence of the scanning velocity varies between individuals.

View full abstract

This paper presents a human behaviour recognition methodology, which classifies human behaviours related to blood pressure change from other behaviours under ambulatory environment using a single tri-axial accelerometer, and gyroscope. In order to classify them, we extended a hierarchical classification previously proposed by authors to organize data sets, and thus one-class Support Vector Machine (one-class SVM) can be adopted. We conducted the experiment in a laboratory environment and in an ambulatory environment. By using our methods, accuracy of 85.5%〜87.5% were achieved in the former environment and 70.7%〜78.4% were achieved in the latter.

View full abstract

Low-cost Indoor location positioning has been explored to provide an exact location inside a house or a building where GPS signal cannot be obtained. Among many technologies, wireless range-based method and Dead Reckoning (DR) utilizing accelerometer are widely investigated. However, there are several problems in wireless range-based method. First, the position estimation accuracy is low because it must need environment equipped with multiple Access Point (AP). Second, accurate position estimation is difficult because of buildings and walls which causes multi-path fading; sometimes, wireless signal does not reach a measuring device. In contrast, DR is not dependent on locations and provides almost the same accuracy inside a building. Since relative distance is calculated utilizing an accelerometer. However, high-accuracy location estimation is difficult because cumulative errors are generated by accelerometer. Based on the above background, we first report results of preliminary investigations about differences of cumulative errors generated by DR between smartphones. Then, we propose a cumulative error compensation model based on preliminary investigations and evaluate the experimental results.

View full abstract

We aim to realize a novel pen based interface that provides various digital operations for both low-tech and high-tech people. In this paper, we propose a new digital pen device using strain gauges for detecting the force added on pen tip so as to estimate handwriting trajectories. The prototype system successfully estimated handwriting within 15% of RMSE. Moreover, we propose a system for associating drawn shapes, such as a circle and a rectangle, with operating commands, such as message input, address input, and sending a message. It is experimentally confirmed that our proposed system outperformed a usual way of sending an e-mail in operating time.

View full abstract

This paper describes a novel tri-switches tactile structure assembling process and its measurement characteristics on micro-CMM. After fabrication micro ball-ended stylus tips by micro-EDM and OPED process, the spherical stylus was assembled onto the CMM's probing head manually. The tri-switches sensing structure was utilized to trigger the electro signal while the stylus tip makes contact with a micro-component. In the experiment on the same point detected repeatedly, results show that the uncertainty could be as small as 0.11μm and 0.29μm in the vertical direction and horizontal respectively. This tri-switches tactile structure is capable of measuring the inner features of micro-hole and the geometry profile of micro components. It's possible to apply this novel low-cost tri-switches triggering system to develop on micro-CMM and measure micro-components' geometric profiles.

View full abstract

A magnetically levitated double-layered cylinder has been developed for windage loss reduction of the high speed spindle that is rotating inside the inner cylinder. An axial position of each cylinder is actively controlled whereas radial and tilting motions are passively stabilized by the magnetic coupling between the cylinder and the stator. Based on the finite-element-method (FEM) analysis results, a prototype machine was built and tested. When the spindle was driven at 12000 rpm, the magnetically suspended inner cylinder was rotated at 4500 rpm. It is demonstrated that the magnetically levitated cylinder is effective for windage loss reduction when the spindle speed was more than 8000 rpm.

View full abstract

In precision micro-nano fabrication, lithography is one of core technology. Recently, lithography technology is applied to diverse field of technologies. These technologies include Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) devices, Flat Panel Display (FPD), and semiconductor industry. In the lithography process, the optical exposure is a critical and essential step and it includes a set of masks. In optical exposure process, a pattern is first created on mask at four times the desired final size and the image of the mask is projected onto a substrate by a large and very expensive reduction lens. As increasing exposure area and requirement of high integration, cost for mask fabrication becomes significant in the total production budget. So, how to reduce the cost of the mask and employing maskless lithography technology has become an important issue to engineers. There are many alternative methods were developed for reducing the mask manufacturing cost or eliminating the entire mask dependent procedures. One of the notable optical exposure processes is Digital Mirror Device (DMD) based maskless lithography. Although there being both advantages and disadvantages, maskless lithography is a receiving substantial attention from engineers in the fields of micro-nano fabrication. The maskless lithography technique provides benefits not only on cost reduction but also on great flexibility during product design and development stages. The basic principle for creating maskless images is that the DMD mirrors are free to rotate from the scan direction, and then the image processing board creates a series of pattern data and transfers it to the DMD. The most important thing in maskless lithography exposure process is how to generate line/space patterns. If individual incident light is not perfectly aligned, the image will be distorted. In order to achieve the accurate alignment of optical head within a reasonable amount of tack time, an autonomous position alignment of micro parallel manipulator system should be installed to each optical head. Moreover, since the optical heads have uncommon aspect ratio and are installed in very limited spatial dimension, the manipulator should also be packaged in a very compact form factor. For the accurate operation of the exposure process, motions of the optical heads should be sufficiently precise than the motion of the chuck which moves in a plane. Optical head alignment process requires high accuracy, but in the practical production process usually manually handle alignment task, consequently increase the cost and reduce the speed of production. In this work, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed to align spot array and judging image sharpness with Auto-Focusing (AF) image evaluation function. To satisfy the requirement of optical alignment system, a high precision manipulator has to be developed. Applied parallel manipulator that consists of four 2-degree of freedom (DOF) decoupled actuator gives chances to provide 6-DOF independence motion, and has strength in high accuracy. This paper covers the follows: Firstly, we reported the DMD-based maskless lithography system to introduce spot array method in maskless digital exposure process. Secondly, in order to precisely control moving platform, applying a redundant parallel micro-manipulator and analyzing kinematic characteristic of the 4-[PP]PS parallel manipulator is described. Thirdly, proposing a suitable error model of the system and applying the PSO and Z axis auto-focusing algorithm to align spot array concerning position correction. Finally, we designed experiment which is applied a vision sensor and alignment unit to verify proposed positioning algorithm. Experimental result will be shown that proposed can solve the alignment problem by reducing the position error of the system.

View full abstract

We developed a dielectric driving device for superconducting filter tuning. This device consists of piezoelectric actuators, cantilevers, strain gauges, and elastic hinges. The cantilever enlarges travel distances of the dielectric rod a maximum of 5.5 times. A step-shaped cantilever with length of 112 mm enables both the enlarging and downsizing. We designed a two-degree-of-freedom controller and a shaping unit for position control of the dielectric rods. This unit deforms step input to ramp input with resonant cycle. This deformation is effective for reducing overshoots. As a result, the four dielectric driving devices, each that are equipped with two piezoelectric actuators with 15 μm travel, realized a shift of 75 μm in the condition of 2 msec intervals. Therefore, a frequency shift of 2.5 MHz in superconducting filter tuning was realized.

View full abstract

The contribution of this research is to evaluate the advantages of torque control approach utilized on high speed movement mechanism. By doing so, an asymmetric arms with a deviating mass center design of structure is installed onto the Delta robot system to perform the dynamic analysis by comparing with the symmetric and asymmetric arm. A rigid-body dynamic model of the Delta robot is derived and utilized to calculate of torque profile for trajectory. The preliminary research concludes as follow: (1) The inertia effect of the arm structure can be brought into consideration for trajectory design to achieve higher throughput. (2) T he torque control approach can eliminate the residual vibration in the final stage of the moving motion and leads to faster settling time. However, the dynamic experiment shows the worse performance of the asymmetric arm and needs further research works.

View full abstract

Inducing material properties of a virtual object in the virtual environment has been a challenge for the engineers. Velvet hand illusion (VHI) as a subset of tactile illusion, however, is to produce a virtual smooth and soft texture feeling in a person's hands. In this study, we investigated whether a typical tactile display facilitates producing VHI or not. In order to confirm this, a standard psychophysical experiment technique (magnitude estimation) was employed to evaluate the quality and the intensity of VHI in the tactile display by comparing with two setups of VHI where real velvet was considered as a reference sensation. The experimental result indicated that the tactile display is likely to produce virtual smoothness in the hand although the quality of this feeling was significantly close to the real velvet in the VHI based on two wires setup.

View full abstract

Because velvet hand illusion (VHI) induces the tactile sensation of velvet cloth, we utilized VHI to create a new haptic virtual reality. In this study, we performed a series of psychophysical experiments to evaluate whether VHI can be generated in a tactile display. Our results determined that, since the ratio of (stroke r)/(line distance D) is proportional to the VHI strength, it is possible to control VHI strength in the range of r/D = 0.5 to 1.5 by varying r/D.

View full abstract

We realize 3-DOF haptic feedback in the plane structure such as tablet devices by using string-based haptic device and control method utilizing the human haptic sense of adaptation. As a conventional research, tactile feedbacks are commonly used in smartphones and tablets. However, haptic expressiveness is not enough and limited the sense of touch by vibration. On the other hand, there are several studies for high haptic expressiveness such as 3-DOF or 6-DOF haptic presentation. However, they are limited to non-portable type of devices. We will achieve the two features, both high equipment portability and high haptic expressiveness.

View full abstract

Mastering the proper method of pronunciation of foreign words is the common wish in learning foreign languages. This paper deals with the surface EMG measurement of the facial muscles in speaking English words, and investigated the mainly used muscle(s), the training effect and the comparison of EMG signal between similar sounds. The result is discussed from the viewpoint of skill acquisition.

View full abstract

Power-assist exoskeleton robots are expected to assist the daily motion of physically weak persons. The concept of perception-assist has been proposed for the power-assist exoskeleton robots to avoid unexpected accidents. In perception-assist, a lower-limb power-assist robot monitors the interaction between the user and the environment and automatically modifies the user's motion if the dangerous motion such as falling is estimated. In this paper, we assume that robot user might not only step over the objects but also push or kick objects with his or her leg. Therefore, a real-time prediction method of user's motion intention is proposed to figure out whether the user is walking or kicking.

View full abstract

Modular self-reconfigurable robot (MSRR) consists of certain number of modules, which is supposed to exhibit flexibility, robustness, and adaptability. However, its locomotion planning and control are proved difficult due to the changeable configuration and hyper-redundant kinematics. Furthermore, automatically generation of robot's adaptive behavior with undetermined environment and various numbers of modules is rarely investigated. This paper introduces an evolution approach to generate effective locomotion pattern and adaptive behaviors for MSRR in unknown environments. We use genetic algorithms (GA) to evolve robot's locomotion ability and gene expression programming (GEP) to evolve adaptive behaviors. The virtual evolution of a four-legged configuration is implemented upon self-developed UBotSim dynamic simulator. Both the simulation and hardware experiments show the effectiveness of this method.

View full abstract

We develop a new calibration method for minimizing the uncertainty and for establishing the uncertainty traceability of laser velocimetry, especially for laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV). Former calibration methods had uncertainties larger than the lower uncertainty limit of an LDV. With the new method, the uncertainty can be reduced using multiple scattering objects attached on a rotating disk. The working principle is based on the linear relationship between the orbit radii and the resulting output signals. A linear regression provides a promising estimate of the true orbit radius and hence the calibration constant. In the present work, we use multiple scattering points along a single slit aperture on a rotating disk. The feasibility was confirmed and the resulting calibration uncertainty was reduced down to 0.2 percent, which is smaller than the lower limit of an LDV uncertainty.

View full abstract

From the previous researches, it was found that there is a relationship between the body part motion and the body acceleration trend of crutch users. Based on the finding, an estimation method of the body acceleration trend was proposed. In this paper, the previously proposed estimation method was applied for several participants' crutch walks where a Kinect sensor and an accelerometer were used for measurements of the body part motion and the body acceleration of the participant, respectively. As a result, it was confirmed that the trend of the body acceleration can be estimated from the body part motions that were measured by the Kinect sensor. Finally, a prototype application software for an instruction for crutch users was developed, and it was achieved that the developed software could instruct the crutch users in proper crutch walk motions right after measurements.

View full abstract

One of the problems in putting Electric Vehicles into practical use is the insufficiency of charging and discharging performances of conventional battery. A promising solution for this problem is the hybrid energy storage system (HESS) consisting of capacitor and battery. For its model based design (MBD) and simulation, a precise modeling of capacitor is necessary. We proposed a Lithium-Ion Capacitor (LIC) model with three elements including a variable capacitor. The accurate correspondences are recognized and it is proven that the proposed model of LIC can be used in MBD method.

View full abstract

We conducted a parallel parking experiment using a self-constructed driving simulator. For this experiment, we developed an acoustic information system for driving support using sound-pressure differences in white noise output from left and right speakers. Experimental results show that this system was effective in assisting drivers in parallel parking and that good driving characteristics could be obtained.

View full abstract

This paper presents a new warning method for controlling drivers' sensitivity for recognizing hazardous factors in the driving environment. The method is based on a visual warning mark in peripheral vision that is called an ambient warning. In this study, the presentation of ambient visual cue was investigated as a soft warning without feeling disagreeableness that is nuisance and distraction of visual warning.

View full abstract

In recent years, robots have become familiar to human society. Human beings are doing the cooperation to act in anticipation of opponent behavior and intention in daily life. However, the home service robot that is currently popular is mostly what is not possible. Humans have gained a lot of information from the visual information. Thus, by analyzing the human gaze movement, it was possible to estimate the human intention and the state in relation. If this reflected in the behavior of the robot, it would work the appropriate support action for human. In this paper, we propose a method for measuring the gaze point of multiple persons. As a result, the proposed method is possible to perform the measurement point of gaze for multiple persons. Further, we propose Attention map to improve noise problem of the gaze measurement.

View full abstract

Human beings are doing a smooth communication with the auditory, visual and haptic information. Multimodal interfaces are obtained by utilizing the communication method of human to human-machine interface. Machine operation assist could be improved by visual and auditory information given the time difference in presentation. In our study, the validity of multimodal assists with time difference is experimented by vibration control task of a pendulum. Four types of operation assisting was compared time to complete vibration control. The four types of operation assisting are #1: without assist, #2: with only visual assist, #3: with visual and auditory assists (no time difference) and #4: with visual and auditory assist (100ms delay for the auditory). Experimental results show that giving a time difference to the information presentation is effective in the machine operation performance.

View full abstract

This paper addresses a skill assist system by change visual information, focused on the initial stage of proficiency because the often used visual cortex. The purpose of this paper is to propose a skill assist technique with visual information. Most of the conventional assisted systems have been required specialized machine and low prevailing versatility. For the proposed method in the first stage are experimental tasks to verify of human characteristics by visual information. These experiments give the visual information to assist to the bar tracking task. Finally, the present study has demonstrated that operation characteristics are changed by visual information. The results suggest that the visual information is valid for skill assist.

View full abstract