This paper presents μ TAN as a flexible micro manipulation system, which consists of a micro hand with a guide robot and a virtual reality (here after VR) human interface system. We can control the micro hand and guide robot by data glove as VR systems. The micro hand is composed of five pneumatic PDMS micro fingers and connected to the guide robot. The micro hand is designed in the image of hand of human begins for visceral control. The micro hand is driven operator's hand. The micro hand is positioned by the guide robot using parallel link mechanism. We did demonstration of soft manipulation of a rhinestone (φ 1 mm) and a eyelash (φ 100μm) at Expo Aichi. Now we are working on the performance improvement of the micro hand and robot, and the addition of the sensor performance.

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Movements of the upper limbs are indispensable for daily activities. Rehabilitation for upper limbs is important for aged people or patients of paralysis caused by stroke. In recent years, the needs for rehabilitation support systems are increasing, which use robot technology and virtual reality technology. Applying these technologies make efficient rehabilitation possible. This paper presents the development of a 6-DOF robot for supporting upper limbs rehabilitation. This robot ensures efficient rehabilitation trainings that focus on the harmonic movement of the whole upper limb including the wrist. We exhibited the robot at the Prototype Robot Festival at the 2005 International Exposition held in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Many visitors experienced the demonstration of rehabilitation by the robot at the festival. After this festival, we improved the handle part of the robot and developed evaluation software.

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We have made five remote microsurgery robots sponsored by NEDO for the World Expo2005 in Aichi prefecture. "Demonstration with experience" is the keyword of our robot exhibition. Along with professional demonstration of remote surgery by the graduate students, a number of visitors focusing children could handle a master finger to pick up a candy. More than 3,000 children made trial for better understanding of future medical robots with pleasure.

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A home robot in the future should be able to be used in living environment with people. We have developed a high performance auditory function for a home robot to communicate with its user, and carry out orders from him/her. It is incorporated into a new robot based on the robotic-information-home appliance, "ApriAlpha^<TM>". This robot is equipped with 6 microphones and a new designed multimedia front-end processing board in order to support verbal orders from plural users. The omni-directional auditory function enables the robot to detect the directions of voices, and recognize each of contents to carry out them. After experiments through NEDO prototype robot exhibition at EXPO2005, reaction with sound detection of the robot was improved to start replying earlier and face detection using embedded camera was added to make it more useful.

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A method combing target dynamics with energy control to generate golf swing trajectories is considered. The time cost of trajectory generation becomes very low by applying the method. A series of swing trajectories from address position to finish position with different boundary conditions and constraints are generated. Experiments are carried out by adopting the generated trajectories as reference inputs and PD control law. Experimental results confirmed the feasibility of the method.

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"Singing" is one of the most important artistic human activities, but it is very difficult to realize an artificial vocalizing system. The purpose of this research is to develop a mechanical "Singer Robot" with artificial larynx. In the recent study, a subject how to generate vowels, that is, the most basic function for singing, is treated. It is necessary to control pitch of voice freely in order to sing a song. In this paper, how to make pitch control by manipulating eigen frequency of the artificial larynx and what mechanism can make proper pitch control, are studied.

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A golf swing robot based on dynamic coupling drive has been developed by authors, which enables high-speed swing while by a smart structure. In this paper, a new model of golf swing robot with considering the visco-elastic joint stop is established and used for motion control. The swing with using joint stop is realized successfully.

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Now, almost all the voices of robots are made by speech synthesizer. They are sounds produced by electronic speakers. This is a study on the Singer Robot using artificial larynx. Now it can generate Japanese 5 vowels [a], [i], [u], [e], and [o]. But it is very difficult to generate clear vowels because the frequencies of formants are not easy to be controlled by changing the cross sectional area of the vocal tract. The Singer Robot is expected to produce vowels with correct formants in order to sing in distinct pronunciations. In this paper, a new optimum adjustment method of vowel formant is proposed. In this method, an optimum area distribution of vocal tract can be searched for the targeted vector of the first formant and the second formant of clear vowel. This optimum adjustment algorithm uses Taboo Search method to explore the optimum solution.

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We are studying the robot arm for playing a violin, which can play it like human. We develop a new bowing mechanism, and test the control method. We measured the condition for a pronunciation necessary for the performance violin.

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The purpose of this research is to develop a trampoline gymnast robot which can do some maneuvers such as straight bounce and somersault performance. We already made study about straight bounce for the trampoline robot system constructed. In this report, some simulation analyses are made for realizing somersault by manipulating the angular momentum at take-off instance and controlling the moment of inertia of the robot in the air. The relation between angular momentum and the moment of inertia of the robot is studied, and the availability of somersault is examined.

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We have developed an air hockey robot system as an entertainment robot. In our previous system, accuracy of measurement of puck position and velocity was not enough and it caused the robot to fail to hit the puck. In order to improve a puck tracking performance, we introduced the Kalman Filter. In this paper, we describe a method of puck tracking using the Kalman Filter and show results of experiments.

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We studied an arm-type "Remote Arm-Wrestling System" in which two persons at different locations arm-wrestle by exchanging such physical information as position and force. The aim of this study is to negate the device's mechanical impedance and to install the mechanical impedance of a human arm in the device. We did three experiments. First, we identified the mechanical impedance parameters of the device. Next, we designed and evaluated the controls that considered mechanical impedance. Finally, to presume the mechanical impedance parameters of a human arm, we analyzed the correlation of detected torque, angle, angular velocity, and angular acceleration. As a result, human operation improved more than past control by considering the device's mechanical impedance. Moreover, it was analyzed quantitatively that the torque detected from the human arm nonlinearly influenced the angle and angular velocity.

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Interactive mobile robots are an active area of research. This paper presents a framework for designing a real-time vision based hand-body dynamic gesture recognition system for such robots. The said framework works in real world lighting conditions with complex backgrounds, and can handle intermittent motion of the camera. We present here a novel way in which the Motion History Image (MHI) and the Motion Energy Image (MEI) is built. We propose a robust combining of the motion and color cues and we call this image as Motion Color Image (MCI). The input signal is captured by using monocular color camera. Vision is the only feedback sensor being used. It is assumed that the gesturer is wearing clothes that are slightly different from the background. Gestures are first learned offline and then matched to the temporal data generated online in real time. We have tested this on a gesture database consisting of 11 hand-body gestures and have recorded recognition accuracy up to 90%. We have implemented the system for Sony's Aibo robot dog using Remote Framework (RFW) SDK by Sony.

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Two people in a different place exchanged the location information with power information, and we researched the remote arm-wrestling system that was able to do the arm-wrestling fighting. The purpose of this research is an improvement on the strength side of the device and an improvement of operation. It was assumed to be a research purpose to examine whether the torque was able to be calculated for the wrist device. The last device was compared with strength of this device, therefore as for this device, the improvement was seen compared with the last device. Next, when it controlled parallel and the arm wrestling fighting was done, the master and the slave drew the same tracks. The wrist device was thought that the arm-wrestling fighting was possible by reading the value with a different upper and lower sense of force sensor when the moment was put.

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A multifingered hand system which can catch a thrown ball at a high-speed by visual feedback control is developed. The system consists of 1ms vision chip system, high-speed multifingered hand system, and visual feedback control system. A ball is thrown from a launcher, and it arrives at a multifingered hand about within 0.1s. The hand catches the ball by its fingertips. This is a result of the project "Artificial Hand and Brain Based on Sensory-Motor Fusion Theory" in the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). It has been exhibited in the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation since July 2005.

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Two responsibility systems do to the accident. One is PL (product liability) which imposes the responsibility on the manufacturer after the fact. Another is PLP (product liability prevention) which has shown the responsibility beforehand at the time of should give it by the designer. because the confirmation of conforming of the designer to the international safety standard is assumed to be an attestation, it cannot propose a new international standard from our country where the responsibility system of PLP does not exist. The imminent problem is a safety of service robot attestation. In this thesis, if the standard is made in accordance with the responsibility principle of PLP according to the principle of the safety confirmation, it is shown to be able to propose the international safety standard of the service robot from our country.

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Nowadays, many mobile robots are developed to automate cleaning task. Some of them aim at using at home. Most of the home cleaning robots are using reactive type algorithm. However, when a robot adopting reactive type algorithm gets into a narrow area surrounded by obstacles, the robot cannot readily get out of there. This causes the inefficiency of the cleaning task. We propose efficient hybrid algorithm to solve this problem.

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This research aims at recognizing tableware by both image processing system and RF tag system for home robot application. In order to make image processing easy, invisible mark made of photochromic material is developed and added to the edge of tableware. Only when illuminated by ultraviolet light from a robot, this mark is conspicuous. The method of calculating position and orientation of tableware from obtained elliptic image of this mark is proposed. In order to deal with many tableware simultaneously, RF tag system is also employed. Utilizing the amplitude of RF signal, the rough distance between the tag and the robot can be obtained. Using this distance data, the correspondence between the tableware captured in the image and the ID code embedded in the tag can be obtained. According to the ID code, the robot can know the radius of tableware and can get the information about handling, which makes the robot task of image recognition and tableware handling much easier.

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This paper describes the easy and efficient environmental map building method of gaining a destination and a picture landmark position, by following person. The technique of Augmented Reality in which the processing time in a recognition phase was quick was used for picture landmark detection from the scene. The map building experiment was conducted using mobile robot ApriAttenda^<TM> in Toshiba Science Museum.

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The paper presents a new approach to the problem of map building and simultaneous localization (SLAM), originally developed by this research. The global map is built by continuously matching the feature polylines obtained from the laser ranger finder. The odometry error between each constitutive step can be eliminated by the global map, which was built in the previous step. The localization of the robot is done using the Monte Carlo approach. The experimental result is obtained by Home Robot, developed by Toshiba Corporation.

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We proposed Personal Carrier Robot that assists to carry baggage and can lighten the load by motor assistance. You can carry your baggage in front of yourself lightly and safely using it. Though only simple mechanism, you can use it while going up and down the stairs.

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The paper describes multiple sound sources localization and separation system for mobile robot communication by 32ch tri-concentric microphone array. The microphone array system has highly efficient directional pattern, and it can localize and separate multiple moving sound sources.

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This paper proposes a practical robotic interface that has tolerant behaviors of voice recognition error. Recently, a robotic interface attracts people's attention as an intermediary between complicated information home appliance and its user. The user wants to operate the appliances by voice. The problem of robot the voice recognition is difficult especially at home and by inexperienced users. We think if the robot acts like an infant, the user will accept recognition error by the robot. Based on this idea, we innovate infant's familiar behaviors to the robotic interface. This paper reports the effects of the familiar behaviors installed in two kinds of robots in the different shapes.

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Service is a new target of robotic computation. This paper points out that we need to correctly understand what should be computed in service in order to study technologies for supporting our everyday lives. This paper discusses a concept of a computational theory of service. To construct a computational theory of service, firstly we need to understand what are necessary services and describe the services on a computer. This work conducts a survey for 10 university students aged 20's to study human actual needs in everyday lives, and reports the analysis of the survey. This paper also describes the progress of ongoing project as our first trial for establishing a computational theory of service.

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This paper points out the necessity of an injury surveillance system that collects children injury data for injury prevention. To clarify the information that the system should collect, the authors collected 3,000 injury data with a help of doctors, and analyzed the correlations between children and objects, environment, and conditions from the viewpoint of mutual information. Based on the analysis, this paper proposes the system characterized by a function of inferring infant behavior prior to injuries.

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The ride comfort of manual wheelchairs is much influenced by Tactile Walking Surface Indicators (TWSIs) that are usually set on sidewalks. The goal of our research is to understand how the ride of manual wheelchairs is influenced by block patterns and their vertical vibrations.

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This paper presents a system which simply measures the vibration characteristic of the walker. The vibration of a ruggedness road was measured with various walking frame. This system used various tactile walking surface indicators as a ruggedness road. This paper has been considered about the influence of the vibration characteristic of various walking frames.

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The proposed mechanism of climbing over difference in level for a walker is a unit with wheels, link and gear. A market car which front wheels replaced by the prototype of unit can climb over difference more than radius of wheel. Measuring control system is developed to decrease shock in climbing over deference. The evaluation of developed mechanism and system is tried by using an acceleration sensor.

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A wheelchair is one of the most widely used welfare equipments to move. But wheelchair's users are exposed to vibration and have a uncomfortable feeling when wheelchair passes over steps. To assure comfortable life for wheelchair users, it is necessary to improve ride quality of wheelchair. To improve ride quality of wheelchair, casters with suspension have been on the market. Authors have tried them, but authors' opinion is they are inadequate. In this report, motion of wheelchair when it passes over steps has been experimentally clarified. And based on the experimental results the dynamic simulation model of the wheelchair and human has been proposed, and transmitting mechanism of wheelchair's vibration has been investigated. Besides ride quality has been evaluated by using VDV and RSM. As a result, modification of caster is most effective to improve the ride quality. So, we investigated relationship between parameters of the caster and ride quality.

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The desirable balanced-position of a prosthetic ankle joint is different during level walking and slop walking, and as most of the existing prosthetic ankle joint are designed for level walking and those supposed to be applied to slop walking are also not satisfying, it is difficult for prosthetic ankle joint users to walk as smoothly as normal persons do during slop walking. In this paper, a prototype of below-knee prosthesis that the balanced-position of the prosthetic ankle joint is adjustable to the inclination of a slope while walking is introduced, and as the device is only at work during the swing phase, the consumption of energy is small. In addition, the evaluation on the function and effectiveness of the device was done by walking experiments.

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d person to climb over a step without a helper's assistance. The robotic wheelchair raises its front wheels in front of a step, and maintains the inverse pendulum control. The human emotion of the rider during the inverse pendulum control has been discussed in this paper.

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In this article, we pay attention to method for estimating the human state during the use of intelligent walker and renew of estimation parameters of user state using walker based on changes of physical and environmental characteristics. The proposed control algorithm is experimentally applied to inteligent passive-type walker referred to as RT Walker, and the validity of the proposed control algorithm is illustrated by the experimental results.

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The purpose of this paper is to realize safe and easy operation of electric powered wheelchair for children with disabilities. An operation equipment is constructed by using four push buttons. In order to detect obstacles, PSD sensors are mounted on our prototype. By using obstacle information, safe directions are indicated and collisions to obstacles are prevented.

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Walking is the most important activity both for elderly people and rehabilitants to spend their daily life safely, comfortably and independently. Walking is the most fundamental movement and athletic ability. For the elderly people, walking especially contributes to improving and maintaining the muscle power, the respiratory and circulatory organ systems, and further walking is a valuable activity to prevent a bedridden condition. This paper proposes a walking assist machine for the elderly people, which use a new active-ankle-foot support machine. Its machine matched to the movement of foot joint. The prototype was developed, and the performance was evaluated.

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In recent years, accidents of bone fracture with elderly people increase because of tendency to fall by a little step in a house. As one of this cause, it is considered that the center of gravity position with foot parts is changed. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, we propose a new type of shoes with high performances by making use of sponge-core-soft rubber actuator. The actuator can estimate an external force by measurement of pressure in the actuator. Thus, when some actuators are used in the bottom of the shoes, it is possible to estimate distribution of the external forces with foot parts. Further, the actuator can control the stiffness by pressure in the actuator. Therefore, the actuators can adjust the center of gravity position of the foot parts. In this paper, the mechanism of the proposed shoes is explained and basic performances of the proposed mechanism are clarified through some experimental results.

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The number of amputees is increasing by industrial or traffic accidents, although safety control and accident prevention are made much of. Since amputees use prosthesis, the needs of prosthesis are increasing year after year. Myoelectric upper limb prosthesis, which considered the EMG signal measurable from residual sources as the control input, attracts attention. The purpose of this research is to construct an intelligence transradial prostheses control system, which uses electromyogram (EMG) signals. Signal processings of EMG signals are performed using a linear multiple regression model, which can learn parameters in a short time. Using this model, joint angles are predicted, and the motion pattern discrimination is conducted. Discriminated motions were grip, open, and chuck of a hand. Predicted joint angles were angles of multifinger corresponding to these three motions. From several experiments, the usefulness of processing EMG signals with a linear multiple regression model was proved.

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SEMG(Surface Electromyogram) has many benefits, for example, measurement of SEMG is easy and a characteristic pattern of SEMG is obtained for each different movement. In this research, it aims at the development of a new interface to be able to control keyboard input by using a characteristic pattern of SEMG.

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We describe a method for recognizing hand motions using multichannel EMG (surface Electromyogram), in which the channels are selected by using the Monte Carlo method. In our system, to select 16 channels that are suitable for recognition from the available 96 channels of the multichannel electrode is a key of our system. We generate 1000 sets of randomly selected 16 channels, and those sets are evaluated for the recognition rate of hand movement. One set of 16 channels that records the highest recognition rate is used for real-time recognition. The recognition rates of 18 hand motions, including 10 finger movements, were assessed for every subject. By using the proposed method, we were able to distinguish all the motions, and the average recognition rate in the real-time recognition experiment was measured to be greater than 97%.

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This paper describes an EMG (electromyogram) control system using general-purpose microcomputer for ultrasonic motor, as a basis on development of elbow disarticulation prostheses combined by ultrasonic motor and magneto-rheological (MR) fluid. Ultrasonic motors have some special unique features, such as high-torque under low-speed operation, compact size, and no electromagnetic noise. In this study, we developed an EMG control system for ultrasonic motor using general-purpose microcomputer (NEC 78K microcomputer), and it was proved effective in fundamental experiments.

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In this paper, new penumatic passive elements for ankel foot orthoses (AFO) are developed. The mechanisms of the elements becomes simpler. Thus, the process for forming become shorter, the attachment of the elements to AFO becomes easier and the constraint force under the same pressure increases. Experimental results show that an AFO with the developed element realizes the performances of some conventional AFO when the pressure in the element is controlled by passive pump and it also realizes the performance, which cannot be realized with any conventional AFOs, when the pressure in the element is controlled by an active pump.

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This paper proposes a life support interface using involuntary human gaze information which expresses the person's intention or emotion. In order to help persons with disabilities to be independent, the operator can control the home electronic appliances by using this interface. In this paper, the proposed life support interface is used to control the volume on the TV. The effectiveness of the proposed life support interface is verified by experiments.

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The step climbing experiment of a wheelchair with proposed hinged caster mount have been achieved successively. This caster mount consists of a caster support plate, fitting plate and a joint, which intervenes between a wheelchair and a caster. A pushing up motion of the wheel chair takes place by the lever up motion of caster support plate when the caster collides to a step. Then the caster is pulled up by return spring and the wheelchair is going over the step easily. The experiment results shows that it can climb up 38mm height step and the suitable fitting angle and spring constant are exist.

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In a society with fewer children and aging population, it is not rare case that an aged person cares another more aged person. In such a situation, transfer motion from a bed to a wheel chair, and so on, is a very hard work for the caregiver and it may lead to a serious damage at the worst case. Robot technologies, e.g. power assist systems, are expected to be introduced to a field of nursing care. Robots for the nursing care are kinds of human-friendly system. Therefore, it will be needed to fill many safety policies that are stricter than for any other conventional systems. Final goal of our study is to realize safe and human-friendly power assist system for transfer motion. In this report, we propose a power assist system using ER clutch. Using clutch type mechanism makes the system more safety because a speed and a torque of the actuator are restricted automatically. The ER clutch has good performance of toque response and it makes the system more controllable. Up-down motions with 8kgf-weight were examined using the developed system. The results show that this system can realize safe and stable responses with operator's motions.

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In this paper, we propose a finger module for Human-care Robot. This finger module has multi-directional passive compliance and the ability to estimate the external torque. In this module, two types of silicone gum cushions are used at finger tip and MP joint. The elastic deformation of these cushions enables the robot finger to soften the shock of contact with human body. In addition, the change of the pressure in these cushions are used to estimate the direction and the amplitute of external forces applied on the finger. We examined the basic characteristics of the mechanism in several experiments and confirmed its effectiveness.

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Severely handicapped uses ECS (environmental control system) to control electrical appliances such as TV, motored bed, curtain, air conditioner in everyday life. The input of the usual ECS is typically ON/OFF by some switches to control the equipment. However, such ECS can not be used for the machines which need real-time analogue input, such as an electrically-powered wheel chair. The paper, thus proposes a new input method for ECS to enable the real-time analogue interface. The method uses an expiration pressure sensor as an analogue input device. Comparison of performances between manually operated control stick and the expiration pressure sensor is shown. Then effectiveness of the proposed input method is discussed.

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In this paper, design of control system and power combination mechanism of a power assist system of the walking chair were discussed based on kinetostatic characteristics of human arm. The walking chair is a welfare walking machine which is an alternative vehicle of the wheelchair, and expected to be driven by user's power as much as possible for long locomotion without giving much fatigue to the user while providing comfortable driving feeling to the user, the human arm characteristics were taken into consideration. Kinetostatic characteristics of human arm were experimentally investigated for its modeling. This model was applied to the design of mechanism and control system of the power assist system of the walking chair to provide a good driving feeling, and to reduce the fatigue.

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In our current research, we are developing a power assistance system for standing-up motion. Our developing system realizes the standing-up motion using the support bar with two degrees of freedom and the bed system which can move up and down. In this paper, we propose the traction control scheme based on posture of a patient. Our controller combines a dumping control scheme and a position control scheme, and selects more appropriate control scheme according to standing posture of a patient. We verify our proposed control scheme by computer simulations.

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We are developing a master-slave hand system to use rehabilitation field. This system consists of haptic glove as a master hand, robot hand as a slave hand and a controller. In this report, we describe a new root witch has tree fingers. The robot hand has all most same size of human hand and has three DC motors to drive each fingers, we develop a special mechanism to realize this small hand. And also. We measured torque-current characteristic to get basic data for force feedback control.

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This Paper describes a prototype of 2 degree of freedom (DOF) inner skeleton robot (i.e., power assisted artificial joint) that is supposed to assist the human elbow flexion-extension motion and forearm supination-pronation motion from inside the body. We have developed an actuator and introduce a T-mechanism for the proposed system. The proposed system is controlled based on the activation patterns of the muscles electromyogram signals and a sophisticated fuzzy-neuro control method has been used. The proposed system is supposed to be implanted inside the human body and can be expected to be actuated artificial joint for future generation. The effectiveness of the proposed system has evaluated by experiment.

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The measurements of human force and power are investigated to design a human powered walking vehicle robot. The experimental results showed that maximum force can be obtained when human's shoulder and the rotation center were on the same height, and the maximum power was about 600w.

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