Almost home robots have wheels. They are suitable to move around on the flat flour but it's difficult to go up stairs. So, our research purpose to develop a small biped robot that can climb stairs. A step of stair is small enough for human but it will be a big wall for small size robot. Therefore, whole body motion should be necessary for small robot to ride over such a wall. This research starts in analysis of a motion that a person gets over a wall. Next, we simplified the motion. The simplified motion needs three degrees of freedom. We designed robots mechanics by using simple prototype model that is made by cardboard. And, we simulated the motion with physics engine, Open Dynamics Engine (ODE). The motion and mechanics could climb a wall in simulation, so we made small humanoid robot that name is Dopey. We show that our Dopey can climb a wall by experiment same as the simulation.

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An Electro-conjugate Fluid (ECF) is a kind of functional fluid, which produces a flow (ECF flow) when subjected to high DC voltage. This study develops a novel small scale wall-climbing robot using a sucker which is driven by the ECF flow. The robot imitates the movement pattern of inchworm and introduces the ECF to realize the motion. First, we developed and evaluated an ECF flow generator, the sucker integrated with pressure source and the expansion and constriction actuator. Next, we developed the robot with 59 mm long, 12 mm wide and 9.5 g weight. Finally, we conducted a moving experiment of the robot on an acrylic board. The robot could move on a horizontal surface, on surfaces with inclination of 5° and 10°.

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In this paper, we propose a novel control approach for nonholonomic spherical mobile robot using a network of neural oscillators. Key features of a neural oscillator include its ability to generate stable rhythmic signals, and to tune their frequencies and patterns depending on the environment. Motivated by this versatile entrainment property, we adopt the network as a controller for the spherical mobile robot with highly complicated controllability structure. We examined effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method by several numerical simulations.

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Recently, Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) system is focused in robotics and medical science. In this research, we aim to design a BMI system using Near-InfraRed Spectroscopy (NIRS) which measures brain blood flow change. This time, we discuss a method of classifying thought with potable NIRS system in the living environment. In this paper, we discuss a method to increase classification performance in the living environment.

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This paper presents a active perception model for a robot. Proposed model can learn automatically an exploratory behavior for object recognition. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed model, we carried out the mobile robot simulation. In the simulation, the robot was able to learn the exploratory behavior which can distinguish the objects of different form.

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Recently, a lot of non-invasive BMIs (Brain-Machine Interfaces) using EEG (electroencephalography) signals are being developed to control machine. In this paper, we try to estimate human's power from EEGs by PCA (Principal Component Analysis). The concept of the proposed approach using PCA is explained, and the proposed approach is verified by different bio-signals of EMGs (electromyography) and EEGs.

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Recently, a lot studies on of Brain-Machine Interfaces using EEG signals are being developed, and the applications to the rehabilitation support machine are expected. In this study, four different tasks corresponding to different brain excitation strengths are designed. Their EEG spectra are analyzed with short-time FFT, and the features of a wave and β wave of different tasks are extracted. A technique for distinguishing on/off of the movement with spectra of EEGs are proposed, and this approach is expected to be used for robot control.

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It has been suggested that cognitive learning is enhanced by perceptual immaturity in infancy, which is called maturational constraints. This paper demonstrates the role of visual maturational constraints lifted by self-organization in the learner's visual space. As a case study of cognitive learning, a robot learns the mirror neuron system (MNS) by associating self-motor commands with observed motions while the observed motions are gradually self-organized. A temporal convergence of the self-organization triggers visual development. Experimental results show that the self-triggered development enables the robot to adaptively change the speed of the development and thus to acquire clearer correspondence between self and other (i.e., the MNS).

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We have developed a personal mobility vehicle (PMV), called RT-Mover P-type2, which shows adequate mobility performance on a rough terrain. Ptype2 movements is base on internal sensor information. However, only internal sensor information can't detect for down-step and ditch terrain. So, I consideration method witch detect for down-step and ditch terrain using external sensor information and movement. In this paper, pay attention to from inside necessity external sensor, and practice verified through experiment.

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Multilegged robots have a wide choice of foot placing to maintain static balance, and can use their legs as arms to manipulate materials. Many multilegged robots have been developed in the hope of replacing people in hazardous tasks. The improvement of the mobility is one of the most important challenges for walking robots. In this paper, the novel mechanical design of an amphibious legged robot is proposed, and a prototype model is composed by using flexible fins. The performance of the prototype model is described.

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This paper addresses transfer robots on a double spiral propulsion mechanism. Some groups of conservation of nature have surveyed wetlands as a part of preserving activity. But there is a demand of development of robots which support the investigation, because it is difficult to move in wetlands due to mud and dense weeds. The double spiral propulsion mechanism has been proposed for support in wetland investigation. A robot moves on the double spiral propulsion mechanism. This robot consists of movement mechanism on supporting legs and feet. This research considers a transfer robot is equipped with six supporting legs, and the dynamical stability analysis using the ZMP.

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The spherical shaped cross-section crawler has been done in the previous research. The unit is featured by generating two orthogonal oriented driving forces by contacting of the external environment. However, the unit has the singular line on which the driving force cannot be transmitted. In this research, omnidirectonal crawler unit without singular line is proposed to cope with this issue. The crawler unit is composed of multiple arc-like crawler modules where each two pairs synchronously moves through the equivalent geared belt mechanism newly introduced. The prototype model is designed and developed. The basic motion of the prototype is confirmed experimentally.

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Cylinder has characteristic dynamics such as rolling with lateral side or edges. The authors developed a new type of mobile robot inspired by cylinder dynamics. This robot has two antithetical mobile modes like a cylinder. In one mode, robot is statically stable instead of few degree of freedom, whereas another mode requires dynamical stability but causes high mobility. In this paper, we attempt to control this robot using eccentric rotor without gyroscope and applying linear or nonlinear control theory. This article describes the characterization of edge rolling and experimental results examined by real robot.

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When the grate earthquake occurred, it is important that the stricken and damage information control accurately and quickly for lifesaving. The early control of the stricken and damage information is difficult under present system, because of the necessity for the stuff, the searching time and the classify data. The subject of this study is the realization of the dynamic creation system for GIS in order to share the stricken information by applying the robot technology. This paper describes the dynamic creation system that the real time mapping on the GoogleMaps for the photo images, the movies and the sensor information included the Geotag by applying the collecting robot installed GPS module. The experimental results indicated the effectiveness of the proposed system for the dynamic creation of Stricken Information on GIS.

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Conventional crawler type the search and rescue robots have been adopted the active sub-crawler in order to adapt to the rough terrain by remote operation, however, the performance of the robot depend on the operator's skill. This study addressed the crawler robot that does not depend on the operator's skill by adopting the passive sub-crawler. The different constraint conditions for the angel of the passive sub-crawler exist for the state of terrain. The constraint conditions for the angel of the passive sub-crawler are considered by results of simulation with ODE in this paper. The adaptive method to rough terrain is proposed by controlling the angle of sub-crawler adopting variable angle constraint mechanism with wire. The experimental results indicated the effectiveness of the proposed method for the angle control of sub-crawler.

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This paper shows an improved mechanism that is designed for a stair climbing robot. This mechanism is proposed for a rescue robot that will move to search for victims left in crashed buildings. To realize a simple construction of rescue robots, the mechanism is driven by only one motor in order to climb a stair. Result of a motion analysis shows the effectiveness of the mechanism.

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A small mobile search robot driven with the pair of flexible shafts has been proposed. It is capable of being effectively utilized for a search inside of rubble to quickly search for victims when a disaster such as an earthquake occurs. Since it does not have to mount any power unit on the body, it is possible to construct the body of relatively light weight. But, it is likely to be unable to move forward when flexible shafts contact with obstacles. In this study, a new small search robot consisting of plural driving wheels connected by flexible shafts is proposed. We consider that the new small search robot can tug flexible shafts easily by connecting plural driving wheels by flexible shafts. To construct the proposed movement mechanism, we have to devise its structure in order to connect plural driving wheels by flexible shafts. In this report, we investigate the roadability and turning performance of the new small search robot.

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We designed a novel telescopic manipulator mechanism which comprises aggregated convex tapes as an arm. The bundling plate is provided with a guiding groove, through which the plurality of convexes pass, to keep the relative position of the plurality of the convexes constant. The main purpose of the manipulator is highly durable application for rough environment, so the arm can be bent without corruption against overload. To evaluate the concept, we applied the manipulator for light load as a reacher and tested that for heavy load in various conformations, avoiding collapses. Hence the results shows that the manipulator has unique performance for practical applications, we will integrate the manipulator with mobile robots to extend its working area drastically.

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It is expected that robotics is introduced into search and rescue activity, planetary explorer and investigation in extreme environment etc. The robots in such environment need high mobility against extremely rough terrain. Since it is difficult for usual tracked vehicle composed of a pair of tracks to change length/width ratio a lot from 1/1 because of its turning property, serially connected tracked vehicles and paddled tracked vehicles have been introduced in order to improve the mobility. We have proposed a tracked vehicle called flexible mono-tread mobile track (FMT). The body of FMT except both side walls is completely wrapped around only by a track belt, which is possible to prevents sharp or thin edges of obstacle and cloth from penetrating. However the prototypes have rail colliding and derailing problems of the track belt caused by flexion and surface profile of the ground. The objective of the paper is, therefore, to develop a new prototype of FMT called RT04-NAGA. RT04-NAGA adopts one degree of freedom rotational joint in stead of the flexible components and accurately designed guide rail system in order to prevent the belt from colliding or derailing. Rubber sponge grouser is also introduced against obstacle penetration and impact from the ground. Finally, standard test methods by National Institute of Standards and Technology validate the prototype.

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Recently, Personal Mobility Vehicle(PMV) has been developed around the world, that support moving short distance and reducing environmental load. However, PMV does not have the ability to moving rough terrain. We've developed the rough terrain PMV RT-Mover Ptype2. In this research, I propose auxiliary for additional function attaches Ptype2. In this paper, I propose generating method of force reference signal is a part of Auxiliary Leg control. The proposed Force Reference Signal Method is the experiments of the rough terrain PMV RT-Mover Ptype2.

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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 Spiral style Wave transmission system for locomotion and a fan to adhere to the wall by suction. We confirmed that this robot successfully climbs wall.

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With the development of the industry in recent years, mixing tanks used in chemical reactions, equip "jacket" for adjusting temperature of a container on outer circumference. The heat medium or refrigerant inject to jacket, to adjust the temperature. Although a large amount of deposits are formed in the inner wall of jacket, there is no way to clean up or to inspect inside of the jacket because it's too narrow space and entrance. Therefore, we developed peristaltic crawling robot for vertical narrow space, and realized the locomotion in 50[mm] wide space. In addition to that, to achieve in locomotion between curved surfaces.

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This paper deals with a new inspection robot imitating a green caterpillar. Gas or water pipes for individual or corporate houses and boilers or hot water pipes for industries are settled in the ground or in the narrow spaces and some of them are covered by casings or hard heat insulators. So, it is very difficult to inspect from outside of the pipe. However, we are easy to inspect the pipe from inside of the pipe. Conventional inspection robots imitating an earthworm and inchworm could not move in different diameter pipe and could not generate large traction force. The green caterpillar sticks a passage such as the leaf by its prolegs. The new inspection robot can move in the pipe whose diameters are from 70 mm to 100 mm, generating the traction force of 17.6 N.

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Many of pipes that supply indispensable water, gas and electricity for our life are laid underground. A regular inspection is necessary for these pipes. In the penetration inspection to which the inspection is done without digging up piping, the influence of the substance in the pipes is received. The micro robot that can easily inspect substance is being proposed by authors. However, the estimation of the deformation behavior of rubber is difficult though the variety of the rubber material is advanced like this. Because of deformation by power with slight rubber the cause, and it is difficult to estimate the deformation behavior of rubber as a result, and to use it for the product design. The material constant of rubber is obtained by the tensile test, the experiment value is done to the analysis that uses "MSC Marc", and strength of materials characteristic of the rubber type pneumatic actuator is clarified.

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This study proposes a novel rescue robot named "Fluid Ropeway". As its name suggests, it is driven by fluid powered actuator. The actuator is called "A-drive" and composed of a flat tube and a slider. The slider bends the tube to form a buckling point and the point cuts off the fluid flow in order to provide the driving force. First of all, this paper aims to verify the relationship between the shape of the robot and the capability to traverse obstacles. Second of all, this paper states the transformation mechanism of the gondola by steering arms to traverse various obstacles.

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This paper discusses a ropeway type mobile method aiming to collect information in the ocean with obstacles such as debris and rocks as smoothly as possible. The device to realize it is mainly composed of a fire hose and a gondola probe, which is driven by fluid power using buckling phenomenon of the tube. The big advantage is the gondola has possibility of traversing rocky terrain where wheel types and crawler ones are hard to cross over, because it can go forward by the driving force not against the ground but against the hose.

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We have been proposing an information gathering method using a mobile robot-assisted sensor network system to support mitigation activity in post-disaster area. Our method includes gathering of information in closed area where the mobile robot cannot enter by launching deployment of a sensor node. The paper describes a mechanism for controlling a cable length that is released by launching of wired sensor node. The cable is wound on a reel that a powder brake and a rotary encoder are mounted on its rotation shaft. The cable length is measured by a rotary encoder, and is adjusted by breaking the rotation of the shaft by powder brake. In the evaluation of the mechanism, we measured the length of cable connecting sensor node by free fall experiment and launching experiment. Then, an experiment confirmed that the proposed mechanism could measure the length of a cable and control the wired sensor node.

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In this paper, we propose a method to confirm the safety of persons using DTN (Delay Tolerant Network). In this method, the user registers personal information on a safety confirmation server on the Internet, and receives a unique ID. When network infrastructure of the disaster area is disconnected by the disaster damage, the user exchanges the ID mutually via DTN through mobile device. When one of the mobile devices is connected with the Internet, the collected ID information is sent to the safety confirmation server. The server matches the ID with personal information and stores its safety confirmation information. We made the application to exchange the ID via DTN. In order to evaluate the application, we verified the communication performance in some situations. The experimental results showed the developed application had sufficient performance to exchange the ID via DTN.

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The authors have been developing an information-gathering system using mobile robots and WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks) in underground spaces in post-disaster environments. In our system, mobile robots carry wireless sensor nodes (SN) and deploy them into the environment. This paper describes a design of algorizhm for WSN construction using mobile robots to improve fault tolerance of SNs. SNs are deployed to ensure communication performance of throughput for teleoperation of rescue robot via WSN in underground spaces. If some SNs are in failure, communication path is reconstructed to maintain end-to-end throughput of WSN. Experimental results using a proposed method are presented.

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A various locomotive mechanism can consist of using a simple diagonal joint mechanism. By using the mechanism, improve the performance of the robot can be expected from that it is possible to increase the rigidity and water resistance and reducing the parts of the robot. In this paper, a inchworm mechanism, a paddling mechanism, a multi-leg walking mechanism, etc. were proposed as a pattern of operation realizable in the combination of the proposed diagonal joint mechanism.

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Principles of motion generation of human upper limb has puzzled scientists for a long time because the complicated mechanism and high redundancy of the human upper limb. It was reported that illusion exerts a strong effect on the human upper limb motion based on the planning-control model of Glover hypothesis. In this study, we investigated the influence of the visual illusion on the upper limb movement by changing the fingertip contact conditions.

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This paper investigates the relationship between the upper limb movement and contact force at fingertip during tracing a polygonal trajectory by using a motion capture system and a pressure sensor plate. The experimental results show that contact friction occurred at fingertip is performed for motion control at corner part of the trajectory where manipulability measure is low. In the upper right and the lower left where manipulability of the upper limb changed obviously, results of distance defined from the position where the subject begins to slowdown to the corner point show a great difference. The upper-limbs movement is notably related by its manipulability.

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First, we discuss the methods of controlling a daily life-support robot. Then we describe development of a daily life-support mobile robot ASAHI. ASAHI is composed of a mobile base sub-system, a manipulator sub-system, a robot avatar sub-system, dialog sub-system and vision sub-system. ASAHI is able to execute human-tracking using a laser range finder, and recognize pointing gesture using Kinect sensor.

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We are developing a mobile robot that accepts directions given through a dialog. Spoken dialog is the most natural way of giving directions to the robot; however, it is difficult to deal with the directions containing demonstrative words when using only verbal information. To solve this problem, we propose a method that uses spoken dialog and pointing. There are two issues to realize pointing-based communication: how to recognize the user's pointing gesture, and how to make the robot point the coordinate. We used Kinect sensor for recognizing the gesture. For performing a pointing gesture, we used a robot avatar, a small robot mounted on a main robot. The robot avatar performs gestures instead of the main robot. This paper describes basic concept and hardware for moving a mobile robot to directions coordinates using pointing.

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As an intuitive way to design a static posture of 3DCG models, a doll-type physical model has been studied since many years. However, there are few researches regarding controlling physical robot using a doll-type interface. In this study, we propose a new doll-type interface to control a real humanoid robot that has similar body structure and large number of degrees of freedom. We have developed hybrid operating system that consists of two different levels of automation such as direct control and semi-autonomous control. We verified the efficiency of the proposed interface for making static posture of the robot by experiment with subjects. Additionally, we describe the classification and representation algorithm of human operator's input using HMM for semi-autonomous controlling.

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A Sarin gas attack occurred in the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995. This fatal gas attack sickened many passengers. Since the disaster broke out underground, the main job of the rescue personnel was to transport victims on stretchers to a first-aid station above the ground. Therefore, we researched the development of a rescue support stretcher system for handling heavy casualties in underground areas or at stations in a quick and effective manner. The stretcher system is expected to help firefighters achieve efficient rescue operations. In this paper, we introduce a rescue support stretcher system with stair-climbing ability. We also compare the effectiveness of our system with the existing device.

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Snake-like robots can be classified by two features, namely whether they have active joints, and whether they have active driving mechanism such as wheels or crawlers. Snake-like robots which have active joints active wheels are especially expected to be suitable for practical use (e.g. pipe inspection, rescue operations) due to its traversability and simple structure for watertightness. In prior research, we have developed this kind of snake-like robot ACM-R4.1, which has watertight structure and joint torque sensors which also act as torque limiter. Though the R4.1 has high terrain adaptability, we found some problems which have to be overcome such as stuck in rough terrain. Thus we developed more practical snake-like robot ACM-R4.2. The features of the R4.2 are (1)Light plastic housing made by vacuum injection method (2)Thin yaw-axis joints (3)Wider wheels than those of R4.1. We also tested the performance of R4.2 and it showed a higher traversability than that of R4.1.

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A robot manipulator in fields has to be remotely controlled when doing difficult works. We have already proposed a remote controller of the Master-Slave system with mobility and good operability, Armrest Joystick. It consists of a 3DOF position controller, a 3DOF posture controller and a gripper controller. In this paper, we develop the 3DOF posture controller that consists of 2DOF spherical parallel link mechanism and 1DOF mechanism at the tip. It achieves a wide movable range, smooth and light operation, and a force feedback. And we confirm the effectiveness and operability of this controller by some experiments.

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The remote control support by the generation of robot's motion which considers the robot's activity environment and a manipulator's operation input is effective in improvement in practicality of a teleoperated robot. The validity of operation support improves by measuring positively the range of the robot's lateral aspect which tends to serve as a dead angle for a manipulator especially. It is because many of failures in remote control originate in contact of the robot's lateral aspect and some obstacles. Then, in order to realize generation of operation according to the teleoperated robot's activity environment, the sensor system which used the three-dimensional distance sensor of the large area and the short-time measurement was developed. By this sensor system, the generation of operation which predicted the contact relation between the robot's sides and an obstacle is attained.

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This paper proposes a motion transformation method using nonlinear state-space mapping. A human motion is measured by a motion capture system and it is transformed into a robot motion that satisfies dynamical consistency of the robot dynamics. The nonlinear state-space mapping is represented by a polynomial of power of state variable, and its parameters are optimized so that the constrains of velocity and acceleration are satisfied. The proposed method is applied to a tap dancing robot and robot motion is generated by an attractor-based control method.

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In this paper, we propose a method to acquire the latent structure between motion and language with small behavior corpus and large document corpus. We extend Latent Drichlet Allocation (LDA) to connect motion and language through latent states. In proposed model, the latent state generates motion symbol and words stochastically. The latent structure can be derived as the probabilistic distribution over words and motions from behavior corpus and document corpus. Utilization of the large language resources result in expanding the vocabulary and it enables robot to acquire large symbolic system as human beings have. We verified the proposed model using Wikipedia as the document corpus, and the experimental result shows that various words are associated from a motion symbol.

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Understanding human behaviors and generating human-like motions are key technologies for human-robot interaction, motion synthesis in computer animation, sport training, rehabilitation. The observation of human actions is fundamental in understanding and generating the motions. The technology of human motion capture has been developed, and marker-based motion capture systems are used in various research fields. However, the marker-based motion capture systems have several drawbacks of expensiveness, obtrusiveness, and operational complexity. Markerless motion capturing has potential to overcome these drawbacks. Recently a large amount of 3 dimensional human whole body motion data has been accumulated , and research on structuring the motion knowledge from these motion data has been made. The structuring of a large amount of motion data is expected to yield new approaches to recovering 3 dimensional motion from monocular images by reusing the accumulated motion data. This paper describes the motion database which memorizes 3 dimensional motion data, the sequences of 2 dimensional image features, and the relations between these data through stochastic models. The 3 dimensional motion corresponding to the input sequence of images can be retrieved efficiently by using the stochastic models.

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This paper proposes motion recognition method by constructing binary tree database and searching it with Support Vector Machine(SVM). We defines the kernel function for the motion feature space. Kernel method, which defines the inner product in the feature space, makes it possible to analyze Hidden Markov Model(HMM) of human motion data and construct SVM in the motion feature space. Motion binary tree has been used for hi-speed motion recognition but it is only based on Unsupervised learning , or non-human sense. So, by integrating SVM into the binary tree, it enables to search the binary tree with Supervised learning. We validate proposed recognition method with 1500 captured motion data.

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Robots, which are applied in the welfare and the entertainment fields, require human-like movements. Graceful motions are unique to human. The graceful motions give positive an impression to humans and it includes essentials of a human-like soft motion. Features of graceful motions have been defined by kinesiology scholars. Aim of our research is to quantify scholar's definitions and to model graceful motions. This paper discusses the extraction of graceful motions features from hand-over motion by combining motion analysis using actual human motion with impression evaluation using CG animation. First we create the CG animation of a hand-over motion which hand trajectories are shaped by ellipse, and perform the impression evaluation. Then, we analyze trajectories of a hand-over motion performed by two actors. From experimental results, we extract some parameters of graceful motion.

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As medical technologies become higher and more complex, and an environment of surgical procedure inside operation room (OR) also become more complex. To understand problems on surgical staff workflow in OR, optimize the surgical procedures, and establish more safe environment of treatment in OR, an analysis of surgical workflow and trajectory analysis in OR is quite important to understand and analyze the surgical procedure. Then we have developed system for 3D trajectory measurement of surgical staff in OR using two cameras and video analysis using image subtraction and stereo matching. In this study, we proposed 3D trajectory measurement system of surgical staff in OR using four cameras with occlusion handling. Experimental result shows our system has potential to avoid occlusion of objects and a problem on occlusion due to multi-person identification.

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In this paper, we propose the hybrid circulatory system for the realization of a bionic simulator using isolated organ tissue. To achieve the hybrid circulatory system, we use a heart isolated from chick embryo, and perform the concurrent microvascular anastomosis by using suction-induced vascular fixation (SVF) method. SVF method is a technique to fix the position and orientation of the vessels by sucking them through the pattered sheet, which can decrease the DOF of the vessels and make it easy to anastomose. Through the experiments, we confirm that the positioned attitude of 4 simulated cardiovascular can be controlled at one time by using developed micromanipulator. Finally, we have succeeded in connecting the Alg tubes with the blood vessels led to the heart of chick embryo.

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Silicone blood vessel simulator is actually used in simulator based training representing human vasculature morphology physically. With this simulator, we can use many of real instruments and experience its reproduction of human morphology and physical characteristics. But the problem of quantitative evaluation of user technical skills and skill transfer has not been solved yet. Recently photoelastic materials for vasculature modeling and motion capture technologies for catheter motion and operator hands has been investigated to add these properties to in-vitro vasculature models in a cyber-physical system. In this research we present some preliminary user studies results of this cyber-physical system for endovascular surgery evaluation.

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Generally, stroke patients are susceptible to left with serious impairment in their hands or feet. If paralytic hands or feet are left without any treatment, their muscles will contract around the joints. In this report, we develop a hydraulic rehabilitation equipment using the bellows for the purpose of preventing finger contractures. Rehabilitation equipment has the mechanism that allows hands and fingers flexion and extension automatically. We carried out a questionnaire survey about developed equipment, and measure the flexion and extension angle about each finger using this equipment. Since the good result was obtained, we report the result of our experiment and questionnaire.

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Recently a power assist suit with bi-articular muscles mechanism in developed in Japan for declining birth rate and aging society. We discuss a controlling system with electromyography, prior to implementing the Power assist suit This paper attempts to control our Power assist suit with electromyography. On the supposition that noise doesn't exist, distinguish equipped person's state with imaginary electromyography (EMG). The result of our experiment clearly shows this system can distinguish equipped person's state . Henceforth, we will study and add newly system that discerning direction of shaft rotation and corresponding to load to this distinction system.

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Recently, robots for ultrasound probe-control are studied to assist ultrasound diagnosis. However, the relative position between the image plane coordinates and ultrasound probe has not been considered for robot control. Thus, we propose robot control based on echogram position by using a probe scan mechanism with McKibben pneumatic actuators. The method considers image coordinates as the end effector of the mechanism. In concrete, the relative position between the image plane coordinates and an ultrasound probe was calibrated, and the image plane coordinates were controlled as the end effector of the mechanism that has six degrees of freedom by six McKibben pneumatic actuators. From phantom experiment results, this system could position the echogram coordinates and it was indicated that the proposed method is effective for support of ultrasound scanning procedures.

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