We report a simple measurement method of the dependence to photosynthetic activity of the light intensity. In the photosynthesis, plants convert light energy into chemical energy and the plants grow itself. In water plants, the pH of water increase by the absorption of carbon dioxide through photosynthetic process, the pH difference of the water reflects a degree of photosynthesis. We have previously reported on a measurement method of photosynthetic activity using an automated pH measurement system consisting of an ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET) sensor we developed earlier. In this paper, we succeeded to obtain the dependence to photosynthetic activity of the light intensity using Egeria densa by constructing a better measurement method.

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In this paper, a force estimation method based on the Hertzian contact theory was proposed by using contact images between a fingertip and a rigid plate. When a fingertip is pressed and slightly slid on a rigid plate, a partial slip occurs on the contact surface. The deformation changes depending on the exerted force on the contact surface. In this study, the correlation between the exerted force and the deformation are investigated. The performance tests show that the proposed method has the estimation accuracy of about 10%.

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In this paper, we describe the haptic rendering by augmentating virtual force (haptic augumentation) using a mass-spring model on the responce of a base object. The experimental results show that the proposed method has a capability to render the haptic response of a rubber sheet.

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In learning a motor skill, exerting the same operating force of the trainer is difficult, because the trainee can't see or feel the force information. we propose a method of training operating force. This method is not using the visual information but using the feeling of touching a stopper. The concept of the method is presenting the operating force information by using a spring and a stopper. The information guides the trainee exerting the target operating force actively. The spring converts the target force into the target displacement of spring. The stopper makes the trainee perceive the target displacement of the spring is right or wrong without visual information. By using this method, the trainee trains exerting the target operating force by contacting with the stopper continuously. In this paper, a concept, a 1 DOF prototype and evaluation are described

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The impression of food can be affected by "rendition"-i.e., the surrounding environment such as the appearance of the food and the dish-not just by its taste. We focused on the sound and vibration of liquid being poured from a Japanese Sake bottle as a haptic rendition of liquid. We expect that these sounds and vibrations affect the subjective impression of the liquid in the bottle. To examine this idea, we propose a method that reproduces the vibration of being poured liquid from a Japanese Sake bottle by measuring and modeling real vibrations. We measured the vibration of water by tilting a Sake bottle, and created a model consisting of two decaying sinusoidal waves with different frequencies. By measuring and modeling the vibration of different liquids with various viscosities, we found that subjective viscosity can be represented by modulating amplitudes of the two decaying waves.

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In this paper we propose a method for calculating ultrasound phase and amplitude of transducers in an array which accomplishes the desirable spatial distribution of resulting ultrasound amplitude for generating tactile sensation on human bodies in a remote and non-contact way. Based on the principle of acoustic radiation pressure, a region where the sound pressure is high enough, pushes the surfaces of objects located in it. A three-dimensional ultrasound amplitude distribution can be designed with our calculation method and thus three-dimensionally expanding remote tactile stimuli can be generated. We operated a few numerical simulations to verify the validity of our proposal method.

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This paper proposes contactless touch screen with tactile sensation. Users can interact with the screen without actual touch and feel tactile feedback. The device is composed of a screen, visual projectors, sensors for finger motion detection and airborne ultrasound phased array, which displays tactile sensation. The important component of the system is a screen that scatters projected image and transmits ultrasound. The screen has another potential for cutting off air flow, which makes tactile images unclear. We show the design of the screen and examine the effectiveness through simulations and experiments. After that, we construct the contactless touch screen systems and examine position recognition test under the support of tactile sensation.

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There are some case to integrate sell over the Internet into over-the-counter sales. However, customer cannot check the shape and feel with picking up the item sold over the Internet. Therefore, we propose the haptic display of miniature for copying haptic texture of real objects. The miniature make it able to check the shape and feel of haptic texture. The miniature is made by polymer clay, and including Touche for sensing hand scrolling, and TECHTILE toolkit for presenting haptic texture of real objects. In this paper, we describe system configuration of the haptic display, and construction of chair shaped prototype of the haptic display.

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This paper presents the development of an augmented reality (AR) thermal display. This device is proposed to augment the thermal sense as the user's palm touches a real object. The concept used for AR thermal display is the phenomenon of spatial summation which related to skin's area of stimulation. The critical aspects of this display are the thermal display is placed on the back of hand and the palm can touch object directly. An experiment is conducted to identify whether spatial summation can occur between the back of hand and the palm. From this experiment, spatial summation is confirmed to take place when the same type of receptor is triggered on the back of hand and the palm. Moreover, the experiment proved that the AR thermal display is effective for augmentation of thermal sense; a cool and warm object was perceived colder and warmer respectively, than the actual temperature.

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Medical doctor must understand the structure of the human body for safe surgery. The aim of this study is development of micro anatomy training system. In this system, two haptic devices for left and right hand are used to operate virtual autopsy devices. Existing haptic device has a problem that it collides with each other in a small operation space. Redundant degrees of freedom is adopted for the haptic device as a solution. In order to provide the operator comfortable operation, multi-CPU control system was constructed. Control software including inverse Jacobian matrix, the haptic device was operated freely. The performance of the haptic device was confirmed by the experiment.

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This thesis includes a development of a haptic display using vibration overlap method. By superposing several vibrations in different phases, human perceives sharp and strong tactile sensation between them. In this thesis we formulated the non-linear relationship between input multi-vibrations in close proximity and the response of the skin deformation. Then we developed a haptic display using voice coil motors with vibration overlap method. Since voice coils are low-rigidity and easy to deform, we conducted a psychophysical experiment in order to determine the effect on human vibrotactile detection threshold by the difference in level of two vibrators. Considering to these knowledges, we demonstrated the possibility to achieve the vibration overlap method with low-rigidity voice coil motors.

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This paper proposes a vision-based control method for a micro helicopter over a low contrast ground. The 3D position, the posture and noise information are derived by a parallel template matching technique with edge detections and Gaussian filters. The proposed method does not require any known markers or special settings.

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This paper proposes a concept of the robotic fire-fighting system which performs fire extinguishment by a swarm of aerial extinguishers with inert gas capsules. This paper also develops a prototype of an aerial extinguisher and its control system. It is demonstrated that the extinguisher achieves flame extinguishment.

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This paper deals with a control system of a quad-copter. Since quad-copters can hover in air, they are useful for surveillance. Furthermore, their dynamics is much simpler than single rotor helicopters. On the other hand, rotor craft is sensible for disturbance and modeling error. Thus, this paper designs two types of controllers based on PID control and a sliding mode control for an experimental quad-copter. The performance including robustness for the two controllers is examined through numerical simulations in this paper.

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In this study, we are aiming to develop a children watching system using a small UAV. As necessary functions, we discuss detection of a targeted person, position estimation of the person and following control of the UAV, in this report. The target person wearing a colored helmet is detected from the image taken on the UAV. Distance and direction to the person are calculated from the position and size of the helmet in the image. Some experimental results are also shown.

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In this study, attention to flight of flapping birds and insects that can do the advanced flight in the sky. The ultimate goal of this study is to produce a test device that can do quantitative flight performance evaluation for more efficient developing of flapping robot. In this text, I made circular orbit test equipment that can detect flapping robot's level flight speed, pitch angle and possibility of stable flight and climbing flight and made verification experiment with commercially available flapping robot. From experiments we have found that we can evaluate the performance of the flapping robot's flight and adjust to achieve the target flight performance by using this device. Therefore, the development of the flapping robot becomes more efficient.

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Autonomous unmanned helicopter is useful in various disaster prevention activities. 3D terrain mapping system using autonomous unmanned helicopter is one of the most promising application of the autonomous unmanned helicopter. To improve the accuracy of the terrain mapping, it is necessary to improve the estimation accuracy of the attitude. In this paper, we focused on the minimal representation of the attitude, which does not require unprofitable procedures in filtering, such as normalization. Among of the minimal representations of the attitude, Generalized Rodorigues parameters and Euler angles were investigated. Through numerical simulation's results, properties of attitude estimation systems using those attitude representations were discussed in this paper.

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UAV driven by battery is used to search indoor of a suffering building and plumbing of plant, but it can only fly at short time because of few burdens of the battery. To solve the problem mentioned above, this paper proposes an adsorption mechanism using magnets which can be mounted on UAV. So UAV can hold its own position by using the adsorption mechanism without driving propellers. We designed the adsorption mechanism in consideration of mounting on UAV and evaluated it.

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In this study, we set a humanoid robot on the center of experimental quad-rotor helicopter (QRH). When the humanoid tilts, this motion shifts the center of gravity, and it causes the attitude change of the quad rotor helicopter. Then attitude control system generates counter torque to cancel the tilt angle. As the result, small inclination exists when counter torque balances to load torque. This small inclination generates moving thrust, and QRH starts to slide. This result means that we can control QRH with external independent devices attached on it.

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In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play various roles by the progress of the flight control technologies. However, their flight time which the battery is used is about 20 minutes. Therefore, we developed an automatic battery exchanger, and developed health management system that is intended to perform for a long time continuously patrols missions in multiple UAVs. In this paper, we explain overview of health management system and introduce trajectory planning algorithm using Mixed Integer Linear Programming which is elemental technology of health management system. This trajectory planning algorithm takes the conflict resolution and the obstacle avoidance into account.

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The goal of this study is to realize the flapping robot which can take off without run, as a bird jumps from the ground and climb strongly. In this paper, we report the result of comparison experiments of some types of flapping wings. We have measured thrust forces and lift forces generated by the wings and electric powers necessary to drive.

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In this paper, we propose a palm-top single-rotor flying robot with asymmetric wings as an experimental prototype for designing a novel compact robot, to move over uneven terrain. The proposed robot prevents its body from rotating by the rotor reaction passively, which is different from the way general helicopters adopt. This characteristic can reduce the number of actuators, and thus the robot can be simplified, light-weight, miniaturized and made cheaper easily. Although the robot has only one rotor, it can generate lateral motions by arranging the wings asymmetrically around its body axis while it generates only stable vertical motions for symmetrically arranged wings. Experimental results show that a small prototype of about 6 [g] can generate movements not only in vertically but also horizontally, which shows the possibilities of a new novel compact flying robot.

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In case of disasters or accidents, such as earthquake, typhoon, and critical accidents, it may be occurred danger area that people can't enter. The areas may interfere with rescue work and wreak further damage. Flying robot which can move three-dimensionally and fly low altitude and narrow place is expected to play an important role in such disaster areas. The purpose of this study is to develop indoor autonomous flight control system using three-dimensional mapping by Laser Range Finder (LRF). If the LRF is fixed, in order to scan three-dimensionally, it is needed that flying robot to be able to move up and down. So in this study, we add three-dimension scan sensor to MS-06 that devoloped by Nonami laboratory.

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Tele-operated mobile robots play an important role in observing active volcano areas in restricted areas. However, it is very difficult for current mobile robotic technology to traverse a whole path from unrestricted area to the destination in restricted area by itself. Therefore, we drew up a scenario in which an electronic rotary-wing UAV transported a small-sized mobile robot by air. Based on the scenario, we developed a prototype rotary-wing UAV and conducted some field experiments, in which the UAV carries a small robot. In this paper, firstly, we discuss changing factors in thrust of rotary wings in different altitude, then introduce the prototype UAV, and finally, report some field experiments and evaluations of them.

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In this paper, we develop flying boat type small UAV. In Japan, many disasters such as an earthquake and a volcanic eruption have occurred. UAVs play an important role in disasters since these are fit aerial photography. A helicopter type, an airship type and so on are major UAVs. However, a long flight is impossible for helicopter type. Moreover the lowness of mobility is demerit of airship type. In this study, we develop small UAV which is able to take off from water and land. The UAV also can fly at a low speed and observe various sites from the air.

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This paper deals with a building block type multirotor helicopter. A system which consists of some components and can be assembled like building blocks with selected components according to the need of situation is called a building block type system. Multirotor helicopters are suitable for multipurpose uses including disaster prevention. Some multirotor helicopters are commercialized as anybody can easily buy and operate it. For multipurpose uses, however, the robot has to be fabricated due to design changes because commercialized helicopters are designed for using camera or other specialize device. Moreover, the robot has to be speedy assembled and disassembled. In this paper, we develop a building block type multirotor helicopter which doesn't need any fabricating for design changes and can be assembled and disassembled instantly.

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This paper reports safety concepts and measures for education and dissemination of safety certification system in EU, U.S. and Japan. This paper also makes report on the comparative survey between EU, U.S. and Japan, building to the study reports on safety certification implemented by EU, case study of safety design at company's development sites, and comparative articles on legislative systems concerning safety in EU and U.S. The study result defined, to a certain extent, the difference of concepts between EU, U.S. and Japan. Fig. 1 shows the difference in formula. Japan is behind in dissemination of safety certification system compared to EU and U.S. The paper examined measures for making up for this delay.

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In the international standard ISO13482 for personal care robots, which will be issued shortly, a safety related control system of a personal care robot shall be developed based on either ISO13849-1 or IEC62061. In general, it is difficult to determine which standard should be applied. We have evaluated the safety related control system according to both ISO13849-1 and IEC62061, and compared the results of them. In this paper, we report a summary of them.

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This paper describes the development of a forklift type robot to support distribution system, which safety technology is introduced into. The developed robot has high ability to convey products, and the high safety functions for people. This control system is comprised of the following components. First is a controller which controls the robot. Second is a safety support component which detects the obstacle of the robot's going direction and which goes slowly or stops a robot. Third is a safety component which cuts off the power supply when detected an obstacle in near distance. We introduce the evaluation examination about the safety of the robot.

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Although development of a method of safety test is important to spread wearable robot, it is not established. However, it is difficult to use human subject to evaluate the wearable robot because of the ethical reason. Therefore, a lower limb dummy was developed in this study to evaluate the safety of a wearable robot by measuring the burden of a wearer. The force applied to the wearer will affect the skin of the wearer. Therefore, it is important to expect the burden of the skin. However, there are many parameters which change the force. Now, the effect of the attitude of the wearer is considered in this study. The result suggests that the relative position between robot and human and the attitude of human hip affect the force. Further experiment is necessary for the safety test to cover individuality of motion and physical frame.

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This paper describes studies to understand the fundamental mechanism of the collision and fall induced human injury by using dummy in the experiment. In our dummy experiments, the dummy on the platform is collided by the other dummy and fallen on the floor. It is concluded that the injure criteria such as HIC, Nij, Ac, Dc, AIS, ISS were effected by the initial position and pose of dummy. Especially, HIC (Head Injury Criteria) decrease under the safety area with helmet in all cases of these dummy experiments, and Acs for all cases are over the threshold level. It is strongly recommended that the ISS should be decreased with consideration of elder ages.

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By development of a robotics technique, the assisted living instruments which have intelligent functions are being developed. As a result, there is a possibility that the accident to which the assisted living instrument under actuation contacts a human body may occur. Therefore, preparation of the safety standards of an assisted living instrument is hurried. However, since many parameters which should be taken into consideration in order to evaluate the strength of impact force from a viewpoint of personal injury exist, quantification is difficult. In this study, the external-force response measurement method used by medical engineering or forensic science is introduced. Finally, the application to the robot safety evaluation of those technologies was considered.

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Currently personal care robots market is in the early developmental stage, and it is expected that in personal care robots market it will officially establish international safety standard for personal care robots "ISO 13482" in 2013. The most important point for complying with safety standard for personal care robots "ISO 13482" is functional safety. It is necessary of tremendous resources for complying with it, and it will become a considerable bottleneck to commercialization of product. We consider steps of common framework for all personal care robots for reducing the burden. We introduce the versatile approach for extensively accomplishing functional safety as an example of Roboticbed.

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We have been studying the comprehensive risk adjustors of human injuries for falling, descent and glitch of intelligent machines, by utilizing dummies (Hyb-III) in JARI. We searched a relationship between physical Impacts on human body and medical trauma scale. Thus, we adopted the clinical indicator TRISS, which is composed of three types of risk adjustor-anatomic, physiological, and comorbid. And they could be easily combined so that information from all three sources is used to predict outcome of human injury. We conclude the level acceptable as TRISS > 0.980 if NISS <4 and RTS > 7.8404. This level meant all AIS sores to be less than or equal 1

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There are two types of outdoor mobile personal care robots available now to assist the elderly people in the aging society: automatic and manual. A typical example of automatic robot is electromagnetic guided golf cart, and mobile scooter is a type of manual robots. For these two types of robots that have been used widely in actual applications, we performed accident survey and risk assessment in order to develop elemental technologies for safety measures. In this paper, we report on the results of accident survey and risk assessment, and also the safety engineering plan which was developed based on the results.

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It is very important to find a solution to aging problem in Japan. It has strong relations to various diseases and impairments. Fall in the elderly people is also serious problem. Falling usually leads to serious damage, such as fracture or subdural hematoma. It may sometimes happen that being bedridden follows a fall. Being bedridden is a risk factor of dementia. This paper shows the method to derive the speed just before colliding with the floor from the equation of the motion using the rigid rod model. We also explain how the friction forces act on the rod.

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We are developing the transfer assist robot system, which is an integration of an electric care bed and an electric wheelchair. In this development, we have improved the practicality and safety of this robot, based on the trial use and evaluation. In this paper, we introduce a summary of them.

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We are developing Life Support Mobility for carrying elderly people and disable people. This kind of mobility requires robotic technology to assist boarding people and needs to environmental information to keep safe not to collide obstacles around the robot and not to harm people around the robot. This report describes the development of 3D LASER Range Finder and 3D TOF Range Image Camera to get positions of obstacles. The performance of the both sensors is getting better to use it for this purpose. The sensors will be tested in Robot Safety Center in Tsukuba city. After the performance confirmation there we will test them in the special ROBOT testing area in Tsukuba city. We are also developing wireless communication module to use ITS services through road vehicle cooperation in the future. This development is continued to develop for convenience and comfortability for Life Support Mobility.

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Product certification system is defined as in ISO/IEC Guide 67 and the optimum set of element for a specific product certification depends on the conditions. Product certification so far, required values are specified in the standard, but in case of ISO 13482, any required values are not specified in the standard. It's need to specify the value from the result of risk assessment. As the result, the certification body needs to evaluate whether or not there are inconsistency or relevant hazards are covered. So the evaluation should starts from the beginning of product development. Certification for personal care robot has only just begun. It's expected to help for end users and suppliers and lead to growth a personal care robot industry.

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The safety international standard for personal care robot named ISO 13482 is coming. Now the manufacturers should consider how their products conform to its requirements. In this paper, we analyze the requirements for wearable walking assistant robot with our knowledge and experience as the manufacturer of Robot Suit HAL^[○!R], the first certified robot for ISO/DIS 13482. We hope this paper will be a guidance to understand ISO 13482.

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A database system to manage safety information about service robots comprehensively is outlined in this paper. The system has been in operation as a membership website at the moment. The website is consist from three kinds of subsites. The feature of three subsites and their target users are described in detail. One of the subsitess is going to be opened to the public after trial basis. Tasks to start full-scale operation are discussed.

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This research experimented on the maximum thorax injury at the fall of the wheelchair to the purpose. When the side falls, maximum AIS is 2.When the back falls, maximum AIS is 1 or less. It the back side falls because the cause that AIS decreases from the side fall decoupled the hand grip part of the wheelchair at the fall. It is necessary to set up the decoupled material like the cushioning material etc. from the above-mentioned result to the side of the wheelchair. It is necessary to set up the decoupled material like the cushioning material etc. from the above-mentioned result on the side of the wheelchair for safety.

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In order to develop a test method for a manipulator equipped on the service robot to assess safety of a person under such conditions that a part of his/her body is mechanically compressed at a joint or between frames of the manipulator, this study clarifies compression situations in various physical interactions between the manipulator and the person, in which the limits of tolerance for superficial somatic pain that persons feel against the mechanical pressurization can be applied as a criterion to discriminate risk-free contact from the hazardous interactions, and discusses fundamental requirements for an engineering means to measure physical quantities representing the degree of compression of body part from a view point of non-linear elastic characteristics of the soft tissues around the bone.

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In Japan, the human resources that support Japanese society will be insufficient due to an aging society with a rapidly declining birth rate. Service robot technology is expected to be the solution for social issues, such as nursing, welfare, transport, household and safety for peace of mind. By putting service robots to practical use at home and in public, people's quality of life and convenience will be enhanced. Many service robots that operate with many and unspecified groups or individuals under various circumstances still have high residual risks because human safety verification methods have not been established. To solve these issues, we have mainly developed safety testing techniques, such as durability and so on. We are aiming for practical applications of service robots that have safety technologies in the near future.

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Because of parts of human body moving relative to one another, it is suggested by the fall experiment using the dummy doll that the anatomical severity varies according to a way of falling. The time series data of the acceleration of each physical part was analyzed by the principal component analysis. For the fall condition that HIC (Head Injury Criteria) level without the equipment used to protect the head became maximum, the time series data of the first principal component score in each fall condition was collated by the dynamic time warping method. As a result, it was suggested that if it was the same way of falling, it was of significance to examine the safety by the protective equipment and HIC.

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Automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) are a type of self-propelled vehicle that do not require traveling rails and an electrical supply line. In Japan, the usage of AGVs is currently limited because their maximum speed is restricted to 60 m/min for safety reasons. Daifuku has developed three safety technologies that can enable the AGV's maximum speed to be increased to 200 m/min. The project will cover a 3-year period from FY2011 to FY2013. In FY2011, these experimental productions and evaluation tests were conducted. In FY2012, each technology has been reviewed, modified, and tested with several high-speed AGVs. In FY2013 operation tests will be performed at a customer's DC and the safety of the system will be evaluated. This paper reviewed the results till FY2012.

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As the birthrate declined and society aged, a practical application of service robot utilizing are expected in order to address staffing shortages in welfare caretakers and provide assistance to elderly to live an independent life. For realization of such service robot utilizing, it will be important to establish the interpersonal safety of the human wearing the robot. This paper reviews some methods to evaluate stress on human due to wearing the robot and to demonstrate practical use of the robot in society aged.

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Robots are at the stage of practical introduction into human-robot collaborative environments e.g. factories, offices, homes, and other public spaces. The injury risk must be assessed, focusing on the contact between human bodies and robots. This study addresses the risk of run-over by mobile robots and moving devices, since almost no such information is available in the literature.

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In order for robots to work around the human, soft stiffness of robots is required for safety. As control methods to realize a robot soft grasp, internal/external impedance and admittance controls were proposed. Comparison results show that responses of the internal/external impedance control become low due to movement difficulty of gears because it has no closed feedback loop compensation. Therefore, the closed feedback loop was studied in the internal/external impedance control in this study. Cyclic finger movement experiments show the effectiveness of this closed loop control. The results were confirmed that its characteristics were improved by P compensation control, but it cannot be enough improvement.

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Haptics is an important issue as well as auditory and visual sensation when considering remote interaction between people, and people and objects. The authors have been developing a teleoperation system that controls a remote hand robot by a haptic interface. This paper reports the extension of the system that attaches an robot arm to the existing robot hand. This improvement enables remote operation in a wide working area. In order to improve the operability of the hand robot, a new control method is proposed that takes into account the amount of change of the hand robot's wrist position and orientation.

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