Employing an audio as a data carrier, we propose a wired transmission method for the multi degree-of-freedom robot. As an application, a presentation robot synchronized with PowerPoint is introduced.

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We propose an active air pillow whose touch sense can be freely changed depending on user's preference. A piston-cylinder mechanism attached to the air pillow allows us to subtly control the air pressure inside the pillow. This paper reports the mechanical design, modeling and mechanical impedance control method based on the position control as well as some experimental results.

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This paper describes a hexapod walking robot whose gait is generated by a simple control circuit based on insect nervous system. Insect generates the wave gait and the tripod gait by using a rule not to raise adjacent legs at the same time. The control circuit for realizing this rule was developed using approximately fifty elemental devices. The circuit was installed to the robot and generated an adequate gait according to the situation.

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The purpose of this study is to develop the robotic shoulder joint simulator based on human shoulder morphology. Human shoulder joint consists of an articulation between Humerus and Scapula and Scapula sliding on Thorax, in which that organization is called as Shoulder girdle. The articulation of Humerus and Scapula has a ball joint mechanism, which is driven by plural muscles surrounding the ball joint. The ball joint mechanism realizes the motion of 3-DOF on upper arm for daily activities. The other feature of shoulder girdle is the existence of Scapula motion, in which it is thought that the Scapula motion enlarges the range of motion on shoulder joint. In this report, we developed the Scapula mechanism as a robotic joint mechanism. Muscles are altered flexible wires and located on the place according to anatomical literatures. The mechanism was experimentally driven by wires and proved movability for the effective range of motion.

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In this research we work towards simplifying the process of motion training in a robot through features extracted from human. We devised a simple motion capture prototype using pictorial marker, to identify the upper body posture of human subject using chest position in association with wrist position and inclination. The results show that the wrist position and inclination is sufficient to estimate the posture of the upper body. In addition, compared to colour-based motion capture technique, our approach is able to capture finer details. However, it does not perform well when capturing high speed motion.

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This paper describes an association model for natural language generation based on motion symbol sequences. In particular, our method enables the model to not only recognize motions but infer the actor of those motions, because a motion sequence is often unique to a certain kind of people. For example, in a baseball game, a pitcher throws a ball much more times than any other players on the field. We constructed this model with Conditional Random Fields, while motion recognition is accomplished by Hidden Markov Models. In the learning phase, this model breaks training sentences into pieces, learn the transition of each piece corresponding to motion symbols, and reconstructs them when generating. This method successfully generates sentences including proper actors. We further discuss the possibility of inference with unknown motion sequences and motions.

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This research aims at realizing the robot throw-over movement which a person is easy to predict the distance to the targeted position of the object when throwing from a robot to a person by implementing the movement characteristics by people. This paper shows the experimental examination of points to change in the movement depending on the distance after the measurement and analysis. In addition we selected the movement data by a subject for a future evaluation experiment.

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The deliverer of handover task operates so that the weight load is informed to the receiver. This study is aimed to clarify the characteristic of handover movement by people and to implement it to humanoid robot to make it perform naturally. Movement of people when performing handover task to a person was measured and analyzed. It may be said that a receiver can judge whether the load is heavy or not. The design method of handover movement depending on weight load is discussed and experimented.

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This paper describes a cricket-inspired miniature jumping robot. A jumping mechanism using a four bar linkage was developed on the basis of the structure of hind legs of a cricket Energy is stored in the spring installed at the knee joint and released just before jumping. Numerical simulation was carried out to investigate the effects of lengths of the legs. By applying the results of the simulations to design of the mechanism, jumping height and distance were improved remarkably.

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The torque pattern generation of a semi-looper robot is discussed in this paper. The semi-looper robot can perform both motion patterns of a green caterpillar and a looper. The serial link mechanism constructs the semi-looper robot. A central pattern generator (CPG) is introduced to generate the motion pattern of the semi-looper robot. The CPG is composed of Matsuoka oscillator which is familiar approach in order to generate motion patterns of legged robots. Discussion points are the structure of a CPG network and design parameters of Matsuoka oscillators. Some simulations using the open dynamics engine (ODE) demonstrate the designed motion pattern of a six-link robot.

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Since most organisms are fairly autonomic, functional and efficient, the study of machines modeled on the movements of organisms is significant in the engineering field. From this point of view, we observed organisms that swim in water by bending motions, and developed a multi-link propulsion mechanism in fluid. This propulsion mechanism can be applied to the manipulator and the amphibian propulsion mechanism. In this study, we have changed fin shape for both anguilliform and carangiform swimming, and measured the swimming speed of the mechanism.

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A swimming micro fish robot whose size is as small as a killifish is useful to seek disaster victims in flood areas, because it can go into narrow spaces. However, in the case that rechargeable batteries are used for supplying electricity to the robot, the robot is not able to continue swimming for a long time because of low energy density of the batteries. Therefore, the authors developed a small and ultra-light passive-type polymer electrolyte fuel cell called "Power Tube". On the basis of this fuel cell technology, the authors created a small fish robot (total length: about 110 mm) by unifying a tail fin driving mechanism, which was composed of a small DC motor and a link, with a Power Tube including a hydrogen generator. The authors also created a low energy consumption micro fish robot with small neodymium magnet and coil actuators, to which two Power Tubes supplied electricity with the assistance of a voltage booster, using methanol as fuel.

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In recent years, robots that can substitute for humans in dangerous activities, contributing to safety, cost reduction and efficiency have been developed. For example, a wall-climbing robot can clean and inspect high places, and approach disaster sites where a person cannot reach. In this study, the locomotion of snails is used as an effective wall-climbing mechanism. A snail moves by generating travelling waves with its muscle elasticity and propagating the wave in the direction of movement. Since this locomotion mechanism is in contact with a large area of ground, it is extremely stable. This is advantageous in climbing unstable walls. The proposed robot uses several slider cranks for locomotion and a fan to adhere to the wall by suction. We confirmed that this robot successfully climbs various walls.

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Presently, the wheel mechanism is mainly used as a mechanism which moves in the ground. However, the wheel mechanism is difficult to run at the narrow and complicated pass which exists in a hospital and a factory. Therefore, an omni-directional mobile mechanism which can move freely at such a place is required. The omni wheel is mostly used at this mechanism. However, the omni wheel has the fault that a steady run is difficult because it is slippery. On the other hand, the snail has the locomotion mechanism using the traveling wave. This locomotion mechanism is not easy to slip. In addition, this locomotion mechanism can move omnidirectionaly by changing the propagative direction of the traveling wave. Therefore, we developed the omni-directional mobile robot using the snail locomotion mechanism. And, we studied the locomotion strategies of the robot.

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When an animal lives, the mutual understanding between the individual is important to live a life in a group. When we make a social life, a spoken language takes a central role on the human being for interchange of the intention. In late years, a tendency to increase has a patient of the functional articulation disorder that some pronunciation becomes unjust mainly on the class of youth As for this disease, a medical cause is unknown, and a cure is not established. Therefore I developed a pronunciation robot I elucidated mechanism of the pronunciation, and to get the clue that elucidated a medical cause of the functional articulation disorder.

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The authors have developed oscillation wing propulsion type fish robots. In this paper, a Scotch-York type driving mechanism of the caudal fin powered by the 2..6kW outrunner type sensorless brushless motor. A self-moving type test bench of the oscilation driving unit was also developed to optimize the structures of the caudal fins. Structures of a concave curve selfgeneration type caudal fin and a rigid fin with with rotating pivot and loosen ligaments are now being optimized. The maximum speed of the self-moving type test bench is recorded as 1.32m/s by using rigid fin with rotating pivot and loosen ligaments.

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This paper describes the manipulation system by the motion controlled mass group ofEuglena. The group ofEuglena was formed by the scanned blue laser beam. Euglena gather around the blue laser by their positive orientation phototaxis. In the previous reports, the transportation limit by using Euglena group was extended by devising the shape of the transportation object. Heavy small cupper particle that cannot be transported by Euglena group themselves was succeeded to transport by the special operation tool made of plastic film moved by the Euglena group. In this report, we tried improving particle transportation with operation tool. By using cylindrical operation tool, we got some success example. Succes rate of the transpotation was improved by way of alternatly rotaiting operation tool.

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This paper describes an automatic manipulation system by motion controlled water flea. The authors have examined the motion control of various protists by using their taxis and tried to use them as a living micromachine. However, there are not only these unicellular microorganism but also various multicellular organisms such as small Crustacea like water flea, etc. Multicellular microorganisms also have their taxis. Therefore, it may be possible to apply their taxis to control their motion like protists. Therefore, in this study, the motion control method of Daphnia magna was investigated by using their phototaxis. The results showed that Daphnia shows strong positive phototaxis to the blue light. A dish-shaped motion control pool was produced. Blue LEDs are installed in the virtical wall of the pool. Manual motion control experiments were done in this pool by changing the turned on LED by joy stick operation. The results showed that Daphnia has much better controllability and maneuvability than protists such as Paramecium or Euglena.

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We experimentally investigate a hydrodynamic effect of a free surface on swimming of singly flagellated bacteria. In order to obtain a three-dimensional swimming trajectory and an orientation of a cell, we have developed biplane microscopy that enables us to observe the same sample at the same time from two directions. Three-dimensional observation reveals that swimming speed and trajectory depend on cell's orientation and distance from a free surface, which demonstrates the influence of a boundary on bacterial swimming. Bacteria have larger swimming speed with their flagella near the surface. They have larger curvature of trajectory near a free surface, especially in the case of backward swimming. These results may be applicable to self-propelling micro-machines moving close to a surface.

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In recent years there has been an ever increasing amount of research and development of technologies and methods to improve the quality and the performance of advanced surgery. In other fields, such as laparoscopy, several training methods and metrics have been proposed, both to improve the surgeon's abilities and also to assess her/his skills. For Neurosurgery, however, the extremely small movements and sizes involved have prevented until now the development of similar methodologies and systems. In this paper we present the development of an ultra-miniaturized Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and its application for the evaluation of the performance in a simple pick and place scenario. This analysis is a preliminary yet fundamental step to realize a better training/evaluation system for neurosurgeons, and to objectively evaluate and understand how the neurosurgery is performed.

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Recently, optical motion capture technology is widely used to make a realistic motion. However, because of the inherent limitation for detection of a subtle movement, it is difficult to obtain the accurate data of human motions. In this paper, an effective non-contact technique for the measurement of the human hand motion with application to high-accuracy motion capture system has been reported. We propose a method for detecting the subtle movement of a subject's toe by measuring the current generated due to the change in the capacitance between a subject and the measurement electrode. This method effectively describes the behavior of the wave form of the induced current.

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Conventional methods for detecting the signals generated by the human motion of walking cannot easily sense such signals. Further, these conventional methods have not been applied to the non-contact measurement of human walking. In this study, we develop an effective non-contact technique for the detection of human walking. We propose a method for detecting human motion by measuring the current generated by it due to electrostatic induction. The cadence components appeared in the wave form of the electrostatic induction current. This method effectively explains the behavior of the wave form of the electrostatic induced current flowing through a given measurement electrode.

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We are research and development in a portable walking record system. This system can display walking route on the map on computers, and can raise the motivation for which a user exercises. This paper describes the discrimination method of gate pattern with fuzzy logic. The gait to discriminate is five, the flat ground, down stairs, downward slopes, uphill slopes, and up stairs. In order to measure the pattern of human's action, the discriminate method is taking notice of quantity of motion. The experimental results clarified the feature of acceleration over the gait. And, the result of discrimination showed the possibility of an available method.

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We develop a prototype of pneumatic cylinders-driven exoskeletal robot system for the analysis of arm wrestling motion dynamics. By using the system, we measure simultaneously human movement and physiological index of skin surface electromyography under static load. On the basis of the results, the effectiveness of the system for analysis is confirmed.

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It is important to clarify how the stiffness and the torque of human arm are controlled in the interaction with the environment. So far, the stiffness of human arm has been measured by adding perturbation. But, it is difficult to measure the stiffness in isotonic movements with various loads, because the perturbation provides the unexpected stiffness increase by antagonistic muscles. In this paper, the musculoskeletal model with six muscles is used to estimate the joint torque in crank rotation tasks. The muscular excitation for random disturbance is evaluated.

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In this paper, we analyze human skillful motion in tossing an object. Two different types of motions coexist in this motion: the one is to catch an object softly and the other is to push it up quickly and strongly. We focus on the motions of the wrist and MP joint during this motion and investigate the collaboration of two joints in order to generate smooth and powerful tossing motion. From several experimental results, we can observe the transfer timing of MP joint motion from catching to pushing up is delayed than that of the wrist motion. Due to the delay, the muscle around MP joint is stretched rapidly by the weight of the object and the elastic energy is stored in stretched muscles. In pushing up motion, the release of energy is efficiently used to realize quick and powerful finger motion.

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The Virtual Reality (VR) technology is applied in various fields today. Especially, influences for human induced by VR through the human sense or virtual effects have been studied. In these past researches, the analysis of the sense had used measurement method of center of gravity or a questionnaire survey. On the other hand, it is known that the sense induced by VR effects affects human's behavior. Therefore, basic measurement method and experimental system for human behavior induced by VR have proposed in this study. In this paper, various experiments have demonstrated by using proposed system in order to evaluate effectiveness of this system. As the result, the possibility of measurement for one of VR effect "Vection" has confirmed. Moreover, the novel analysis combined by different stimulations by using proposed system also examined.

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In this paper, the influence of the finger posture on the subjective effort during pinching motion is discussed. Experimental results show that subjective effort human feels is strongly affected by the size of the object he/she pinches, and the subjective effort correlates with the index finger and thumb length. This results suggest that the reason why subjective pinching effort is influenced by the finger posture is the difference in the efficiency of the force transmission from the muscles.

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In this paper, the purpose is to make Muscle-Skeletal Kinematic Model of Index Finger and measure the force vector of muscle. The finger from a posture where it has extended to a posture where joints have been flexed completely is divided in posture of6 patterns. The finger was taken an image with MRI in each posture. With AutoCAD the 3D model of the finger were constructed in three subjects. In calculating the joint center, the basipodite bone of other posture was superposed to the basipodite bone of a certain posture which was standard. The moment arm of the tendon and muscle was measured by obtained joint center. The force vector of muscle is obtained by using those parameters. The results show that TE, LUM, INTP, INTD puts out power in the direction of extension and FDS, FDP puts out power in the direction offlection.

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The mass properties of the human body are crucial in biomechanics studies and for some medical applications. In our previous works, we experimentally identify the human body dynamics from motion capture data and contact force measurements. However, this method can identify only the minimal-set of inertial parameters, and it is difficult to find the persistent exciting trajectories to identify the whole parameters of a large number of DOF. In this paper, we have developed a software and interface for realtime estimation of the whole-set of inertial parameters. This interface visualizes the progression of the identification, and realizes the persistent exciting trajectories easily.

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Power assist system is used to reduce human's force with lifting objects. If human applies too large force to power assist system, however, power assist system moves high speed and dangerous for human. If it happens, human can't lift object properly. For that reason, it is necessary to apply correct force by seeing object with power assist system. In order to do so, power assist system must be designed as match human's characteristics. We studied weight perception in lifting object with power assist system and found that human felt about 40% weight compared to weight which we designed in computer system. We think that this situation is caused because of time delay of power assist system. In order to confirm it, we change time delay in computer system and check how much weight human feels.

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This paper shows role and effects of visual information on movement of a human upper limb experimental. The obtained experimental results show that the vision information produces sub-goals of the human upper limb movement when a target trajectory is perfectly present. On the other hand, when the target trajectory is not perfectly present, there are two interesting tactics are shown by using the vision information. The one is to produce sub-goal for interpolation of deficit area of the object trajectory. The other is to measure between the represent point of object trajectory and the fingertip, and to move the fingertip in the deficit area of the object trajectory

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Visual functions have an important role for a robot who observes partner robots and engages an assemble task with the other robots cooperatively. In order to develop an effective visual function for robots, we consider a function of visual attention for a robort. The robot can quickly process regions that are important to recognize its partner's actions by an attention mechanism. This is a gazing function which has very similar mechanism for obtaining visual information by eyemovement in the human visual system. From this consideration we investigated properties of the human visual scanpath in a scene of robot hand movement. The hROIs(Human Regions-Of-Interest) are measured by psychophysical experiments then compared using the positional similarity index, Sp, based on the scanpath theory. The result suggests that the scanpath is more consistent due to dominant top-down active looking by an internal cognitive model in such a scene.

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To realize the harmonious cooperation with the operator, the man-machine cooperative system must be designed so as to accommodate with the characteristics of the operator's skill. One of the important considerations in the skill analysis is to investigate the switching mechanism underlying the skill dynamics. On the other hand, the combination of the feed forward and feedback schemes has proved to work successfully in modeling of human skill. In this paper, a new stochastic switched skill model for the sliding task, wherein a minimum jerk motion and feedback schemes are embedded in different discrete states,is proposed. Then, the parameter estimation algorithm for the proposed switched skill model is derived. Finally, some advantages and applications of the proposed model is discussed.

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Though the perceived steering quality for an automobile is very important, a useful design framework of the operation feeling has never been established. In this study, for the sake of analyzing the operation and perception characteristics of right and left hands respectively, the isolated steering wheel which can independently generate the steering force and can independently measure the operation force was developed. Furthermore, the mirrored steering illusion system using the mirror image was developed and the subliminal scheme with respect to the bimanual operation is investigated.

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This paper presents a new hybrid system model which is extended from the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) by specifying the state transition probability and the symbol output probability using a likelihood of Logistic Regression Model and the ARX model, respectively. By this extension, more complex behavior can be expressed with smaller number of states compared with the HMM. The parameter estimation algorithm for the proposed model is derived based on the EM algorithm with the weighted likelihood function. Then, the proposed algorithm is applied to identify some complex behavior, and the usefulness is confirmed.

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In recent years, some care giver motion analyses are studied, and more systems for nursing care are developed. However, the number of study that considers the influence on the patient side is scanty. In this paper, we described the experiment for extracting care giver motion for controlling care giver robot.

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This paper discussed the effects of time pressure (TP) which is the pressure from the limit time to fulfill the work in working performance. Working performance can be improved by adjusting external conditions although fatigue occurs. In our experiment, TP was measured by a game whose conditions were set as followed: TP was fixed, TP was changed with working times and performance respectively. We found out that through the all the TP limit times, there are 2 performance peaks, and with the suitable TP, working performance will rise although fatigue occurs. On the other hand, under the same TP with bringing smoothly, high performance can maintain for long time.

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In engineering education, education on design skills has been regarded as important. At advanced faculty of Wakayama National College of Technology, to provide the skills for students, curriculum of the Advanced Experiments was modified and a new project of Design Practice was carried out. In this report, a project of making a Line Trace Car is reported. From the results of the project, it is clear that most of the students acquired design skills.

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The programmable robotics product named LEGO Mindstorms is being watched in the field of mechatronics education. It consists of LEGO blocks and RCX controller. However, such a teaching material with LEGO exists only a little for students of college of technology who study basis of mechatronics including mechanism, kinematics, etc. In particular, the one made by student's viewpoint is none at all. In this trying, using a problem based learning (PBL) method, a teaching material with LEGO is made by advanced course students in Nara national college of technology.

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In this Paper, collaboration and education system for students of National College of Technology (NCT) based on Tele-Control system has been proposed. In the proposed system, Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) provides experimental apparatuses for tele-control system as a server site, and the client system is constructed by using 1 DOF paddle system with haptic feedback for student's use in a client site at NCT. Several control experiments have conducted between TUT and 9 NCTs respectively. Moreover, experimental contents have proposed and improvement for communication environment using QoS control has evaluated through the experiments.

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A creative educational program for department of mechanical engineering using bipedal walking robot is introduced. For educating in the mechanical engineering, we focused on kinematics and dynamics about the robot. The educational program was tested for university freshmen for a great number of people of 100 scales. They were divided into 10 groups with 10 peoples. A bipedal walking robot "e-nuvo WALK ver. 3" and softwares for the robot was given for each group. Robotic floor exercise in two minutes after one minute presentation was given for each group as a challenge. Guidance of the robot, group work and competition were lectured in 6 weeks. In this paper, tools, equipment, preparation and execution of the educational program are introduced in detail.

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Authors feel that learner's learning each other and team work are important at the robot creation education. Author proposes the method of the robot creation education that the teacher behaves as Fashiritatar and the learner studies with PBL(Problem Based Learning).

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In this paper, we introduce an education through design and manufacture of self-propelled drawing robot. In Department of Advanced Robotics, Chiba Institute of Technology, we made a curriculum to provide combination of lectures and practical works in parallel. At first, freshman design and manufacture a simple automatic mobile robot. In this process, they study basics of mechanics, electronics, control, computer programming and so on. Our main purpose is to lead the freshman to understand the theory is variable to design automatic machine with experience. As the result of the program, most of freshman found importance of the theories.

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In this research, we develop the support system for mechatronics education using "Wiki" web pages. We also propose the management system of these Wiki pages. These pages are opened to the public. We provide contents for third graders who join "Microcomputer Seminar" in Shibaura Institute of Technology. Using Wiki, we can construct self-study environment for students. Moreover, we can accumulate and share information.

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The development of mechatronics in recent years is remarkable. Therefore, such a personnel training is not done enough in the enterprise of the medium-small business. In this report, the talent promotion project of Osaka Prefectural College of Technology is described. For members of society, we lectured using a small robot as a beginning mechatronics. After that a kettle pot and an autonomous robot were manufactured to promote a series of process of manufacturing by a group.

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In the recent years, in order to foster the creativity of undergraduate students of engineering fields, the acquisition of technical skills requires an interdisciplinary approach to understand the basic knowledge among different backgrounds. As an approach to cover different aspects of the Robot Technology, in this project, we focused in developing an education tool designed to introduce at both elementary level and higher level students the principle of developing mechatronic systems. In particular, the development of an inverted pendulum mobile robot has been proposed. In this paper, the development of the Waseda Wheeled-Vehicle No.1 (WV-1) is described. A set of experiments are proposed to verify the controllability and stability properties of the WV-1.

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Practical lecture that intends the student's motivation and skill improvement have attracted attention by educational institutions. DC motor and rotary encoder have used in many lectures, because it is easy to use and it has abundance of contents that can be learned Mechatronics, Control Design and so on. Plus, a development technique that is called Model Based Development (MBD) has attracted attention by business. This paper reports a prototype of the control system for the DC motor that can match to the content of the study in the educational institution and study the MBD at the same time.

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We have developed a learning environment for embedded system design. The learning environment consist of a multi core microprocessor(Propeller) and cellular phones. The cellular phone provides an interactive user interface and software development environment. The Propeller chip has eight 32-bit processors and can perform simultaneous tasks for multi users. In addition, the Propeller chip realize reconfigurable peripheral module. This feature is very useful for the development of educational materials. Teachers can develop various educational materials with this control module.

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This paper presents a 3D graphics engine for Open Dynamics Engine. The drawstuff library is used for visualization of demo programs of Open Dynamics Engine. The drawstuff library is a very simple library based on the OpenGL library and written by the C++ language. However, it cannot import common mesh file formats such as Maya (.obj), 3DS Studio (.3ds), COLLADA (.dae), and so on. The proposal 3D graphics library, irrdrawstuff, is written based on the Irrlicht engine, which is a cross-platform high performance real-time 3D graphics library. Irrdrawstuff is an upper compatible library with the drawstuff, and it can import common mesh file formats and has more features than drawstuff.

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