To observe one's own motion is very important in improving one's skills of bicycle riding. Though there are many elements about riding states of a bicycle, especially in this paper, we focus on the loads and moments applied to a handle and a saddle. Then, we propose a system that measures forces and moments of a handle and a saddle to analyze one's skill. We visualize the important elements; forces and moments by proposed measurement system in this paper.

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Recently, much research has been done on the mechanical systems which investigate the relationship between human and robot behaviors. For example, development of intelligent prosthesis and power assist system, and so on. In such studies, embodiment and sense of agency are key phenomena in human. To investigate these phenomena there are basically two types of factors to be treated with. One is morphological similarity and the other is motion pattern similarity. In this study, we focused on the motion pattern similarity of the system with human behaviors. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the self-ownership through the drawing motion. Result of this experiment is applicable to assistance robotic system and augmented body systems.

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In this study, we propose a sense of speed model in order to develop a control system for comfortable driving of a micro electric vehicle. To verify the proposed model, we develop a torque based model for controlling of a micro electric vehicle. The torque based model is considered from the input of an accelerator pedal to the output of vehicle motion. The sense of speed model is consisted of ecological tau concept which is limited to straight driving. For experiments, we verify the proposed method that the vehicle is controlled based on the sense of speed model through simulation.

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High-speed manipulation has great potential to produce new robotic skills utilizing the feature of high-speed motion. Based on the concept, we had achieved high-speed throwing motion using a high-speed multi-fingered hand-arm system as an example. The purpose of this study is to achieve catching a high-speed ball with a high-speed hand-arm system and high-speed visual feedback. One of the main problems in catching a high-speed moving light-weight ball is a ball bouncing off after hitting the hand. Because of this problem, the operation time by the hand is limited to a very short time. Therefore in this paper, we consider arm motion to extend the operation time.

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We investigated the response of postural sway during local vibratory stimulation of elderly people with/without low back pain in standing position by using our developed variable frequency vibratory stimulation device and a gravicorder. The vibratory stimulations of 30, 60, 150, or 240Hz were applied to the subjects' lumbar multifidus or gastrocnemius soleus muscles. As a result, statistical significant differences appeared in the relative proprioceptive weighting (RPW) ratios with_30Hz and 240Hz between elderly people with/without low back pain. Moreover it was found that there are correlations between the RPW with 30Hz and the Japanese Orthopaedic Association score, and between the RPW with 240Hz and the visual analogue scale of low back pain.

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If we want to improve the skill of calligraphy, we need some training. However, it takes long time and many people cannot make enough time to do it. So, we developed a system which assist a non-training man. But, if a man was assisted by only position, he could not find the end point or inflection point of a word until go through such points. Therefore, our system assist not only pen's position but also its velocity. Slow speed tells that a inflection point is near and high speed assists the movement of the pen at end point(which called HANE or HARAI). In this paper, we describe the way to make the velocity pattern and show the effectiveness of assisting the position and velocity through the experiment with the actual machine.

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Haptic-enabled active bone-conducted sound sensing can estimate joint angle and provide haptic feedback simultaneously. The proposed method emits the unnoticeable vibration to the bone for estimating joint angle, and the perceptible vibration is added for providing haptic feedback. In this study, we propose the gripper control system using haptic-enabled active bone-conducted sound sensing as an application. Gripper can be controlled based on the estimated joint angle, and haptic feedback can be also provided when the gripper grasps an object. Additionally, we improved the accuracy of estimating joint angle by employing the optimal frequency.

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Body accelerations of crutch users are considerable factors for an evaluation of the crutch walk stability. In this paper, body parts motions and body accelerations of crutch users were measured, and their relationship was discussed. Based on the discussion, an estimation method of body accelerations was proposed, i.e., it was expected that body accelerations can be estimated from body parts motions by using the derived method. Several participants' crutch walks were measured, and the proposed estimation method was applied for the next measurements. In the experiments, body parts motions of crutch users were measured by Kinect sensor. Since several sensors are embedded in Kinect sensor, it can measure the transitions of body parts without any other devices. Finally, it was confirmed that body parts motions can be measured by the Kinect sensor, and the body accelerations can be estimated from the measured body parts motions.

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Digital human has been tried to use for an injury prevention and motion evaluation in sports activity. Moreover Human modeling has been studied actively for the posture generation of the digital human. In this study, we focus on the forearm that plays an important role in everyday life, further aim to the construction of the pro-/supination model of the forearm skeleton. The conventional model proposed by Kecskemethy et al is presented parameters as forearm bone behavior. These are estimated by three virtual springs as the fitting parameter so that the deviation between calculated values and actual measurements are minimized. However, we cannot match them in the non-linear least-squares method that is a conventional technique by them. Thus in this paper, we suggest method to improve the fitness of s and θ by estimating three non-linear parameters of virtual springs using particle swarm optimization.

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The human locomotion is complicated movement to move a whole body while maintaining standing position posture against gravity, and a muscle and the joint of the whole body work with control of the central nervous system in harmony. In addition, the postural sway in human locomotion knows that I perform mode transition by the physical limitation and foot disorder, individual difference. We captured a human locomotion using a motion capture system in this study and extracted the main mode and residual mode in what a mode analyzed and examined the postural sway model from the residual mode which a characteristic of the walk exercise appeared.

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Athletes and artisans gets a tacit knowledge in longtime experiences. The tacit knowledge is impossible to tell other persons directly. However, if common features should reside in their experiences, we will assume those are one of common elements of tacit knowledge in experts and requirements to be experts. In this paper, we measured a bat swing motion by using 3D motion capture systems, and analyzed a muscle power of a lower limb. In the analysis, we estimated a muscle power of a lower limb of regular players and beginner players in high school baseball by using kinetic analysis systems, and extracted common features of expert players with comparing these data.

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Recently, research on nonholonomic systems have been extensively investigated. This paper deals with the kinematic mobile robot that is a nonholonomic system. In general, real systems have the input saturation on actuators. We propose control method that consider input saturation. The proposed method is based on the pseudo continuous exponential stabilizing controller for chained form. Our approach for input saturation is designed using the switching function. The proposed method is verified by a simulation.

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When a beginner rides on a Segway-like vehicle, it tends to vibrate back and forth. The backward movements are considered to be a main cause of the rider's anxiety. To reduce it, we developed a backward protection mechanical stand. The stand supports the vehicle's body against a floor so that it does not rotate backwards. Also, the stand is designed to be automatically retracted into the vehicle after it moves for a specific forward distance. This is the least distance at which practiced riders are able to move by their control and novice riders are not. This paper discusses the design of this automatic retractable backward protection step.

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Recently, welfare vehicle (WV) is attracted attention for patients and elders. WV with free casters can not be driven well when the road condition is rugged in outdoor. The skid steer mechanism has been focused to realized compact WV. The skid steer vehicle is well known for its high traveling ability in off-road. However, The vehicle has disadvantage that advanced maneuvering techniques are needed because steering motion is rugged by road condition. In this paper, we propose a steering assistance control system using Modeling Error Compensator with extended Kalman filter that is robust to the sensor noise. The effectiveness of the proposed control system is verified by the driving simulation including the variation of road surface condition.

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We proposed a simple mechanism running on geometrically complete trochoidal trajectory as a novel omnidirectional translation mechanism. It has also high ability to get over the difference in level. A model with simple 3D link mechanism needed to have all-wheel-drive mechanism to get over rough terrain. The mechanism had to drive wheels with inconstant angular velocity to produce trochoidal trajectory. In this report, the inconstant wheel velocity was realized by the combination of a new designed spherical wheel and camber angle in the simple mechanism.

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In this study, we are developing an add-on driving unit to help an attendant who are pushing an conventional commercialized wheelchair in which a patient is sitting in the wheelchair. This development is based on the following three concept:(1)It's easy to attachment to and detachment from the wheelchair. (2)It's able to be applied to the most of the conventional commercialized wheelchairs. (3)It's cheap.

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This paper describes a method to improve a traveling performance of a low center-of-gravity type two-wheel mobile robot. We have a plan to use the robot as a tour guide robot to explain exhibits for visitors. Generally this type robot cannot climb over a step because the body of the robot tilts before rolling the wheel. The robot needs climb over a step of about 1 cm because the usable environment of the robot is limited indoors. Therefore we propose an extra wheel mechanism in order to improve the traveling performance. The mechanism needs not additional sensor and control method. The proposed robot was able to climb over the target step by experiments.

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Transportation facilities used by people have several problems that they don't have general versatility. Thus, we develop the city commuter that can be used when they stop. The proceedings explain the city commuter's functions, mechanisms and characteristic of two prototypes. The city commuter that solved the several problems was designed.

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In this paper we present a robust navigation method under static environment, where there are unknown obstacles, using a topological map based on Generalized Voronoi Diagrams (GVD). By getting observation information by Laser Range Finder (LRF), the mobile robot can be navigated in the topological map. In case that unknown obstacles are recognized, robust navigation is done by considering its topological effect. We assume that topological changes by unknown obstacles are classified in two patterns. One is that there is an unknown obstacle "in a crossroad". The other is "on a passage". Every time the mobile robot encounters an unknown obstacle, the algorithm classifies a local topological change in one of two patterns. Based on the pattern classified, the algorithm plans a local alternate path. An experiment in the indoor environment by the mobile robot shows the good performance of the algorithm for navigation.

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The welfare vehicles have been widely used by elderly and disabled people in the facilities such as hospitals. The user can control the vehicle by the joystick operation easily. Recently, automatic driving for the welfare vehicle has been studied to reduce driver's burden and to improve the driving safety driving. The automatic control along the target trajectory created based on floor map is major way for welfare vehicle. However, it is difficult to change the driving route at will because unpleasant vibration occurs during switching the control method caused by discontinuity of control input. Especially, it is well known that switching control system from automatic driving to manual driving is severe problem. In this paper, we propose the smooth switching method from automatic driving to manual driving with bumpless control transfer using an active joystick. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the driving experiments at the corner in narrow corridor.

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This paper describes a novel rough terrain traversability analysis method for a mobile robot navigation. We focused on the scenario of mobile robot operation in disaster environment with limited sensor data. The proposed method enables mobile robots to analyze terrain traversability of surrounding area and select safe course direction in spite of the limited sensor data acquisition area. Terrain traversability analysis and course direction judgment are realized based on feature value calculation of terrain, fuzzy inference and vector field histogram. The experimental results show that the proposed method can select safe course direction of the mobile robot successfully.

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This paper presents and discusses the current progress of our approach to recognizing and following a target person for outdoor service robot-applications. In order to perform its duties the mobile robot should be able to efficiently recognize and follow a running person. The mobile robot is equipped with three sensors: laser range finder (LRF), omnidirectional camera, and wheel encoders. The sensor data are scan data, colored image data and rotary encoder's data. All the sensors data are used for robot localization, target tracking and recognition, and motion control. We conducted some experiments to prove the validation of the control method and we proposed some solutions for more efficient running-speed following navigation. Besides, ongoing research to solve the vibration problem due to passive caster wheels is also described.

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This paper deals with obstacle avoidance motion for electrical wheelchair in the crowd. Optimum avoidance velocity and direction for wheelchair are determined by solving minimization problem in terms of close cost function between a human and wheelchair. The close cost function is given by movement distance foresaw in arbitrary prospective time period for both dynamic pedestrian model and wheelchair dynamic model.

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Planetary rovers are required a high performance to traverse rough terrain like loose soil with steeps. Our proposed robot has high mobility performance, especially; it can traverse loose soil with steep slopes. The proposed mechanism can support on surface of loose soil with steep slope because of it has "piles" which are penetrated into the soil. In other word, this robot can use earth pressure to support itself weight on loose soil with steep slope. The proposed robot has two bodies and four pile's units. Two bodies are connected two ball screws units. Therefore, the mobility motion of bodies is fro-back system. Then, the piles can be penetrated into soil by mechanism with up-down system. In this paper, we discuss the relation between the earth pressure and hardening effect among experiments.

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The vehicle using omnidirectional wheels has ability to move in all directions without changing the body direction unlike a normal four-wheel-drive vehicle, so it can go in narrow space and realize speedup of the work because it can move laterally. But the Mecanum Wheel as an example of omnidirectional wheel is unsuitable for rough terrain now. In this paper, we designed the new Mecanum Wheel which has spiral structure. Rollers are attached to wheel's circumference helically. When the vehicle with this spiral Mecanum Wheel moves laterally, the tip of the parts forming the spiral is rotated as to cover from above the step. We have performed the experiment using the prototype of spiral Mecanum Wheel and verified its performance.

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Tires for automobiles in general have a problem that is puncture. There are various conventional airless tires to solve this problem. Our group focuses on fiber material to develop newel airless tire. Fiber material has high vertical force at pulling in shearing way. This means that this high vertical force becomes alternative of air. Proposed airless tire has this function. Running experiments using single wheel test bed are carried out on various surfaces (rigid, loose, step etc.). We furthermore carry out running experiments using four wheels test bed with proposed airless tires. From these results, we discuss traversability of proposed airless wheel.

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This paper suggests control system for mobile robot which is used to assist wheelchair travelling in care and medical facilities. The proposed robot equips visual function, grasping function and mobile function in order to realize the following actions; (1) The action that can recognize the obstacle and normal human and avoid them. (2) The action that can find out abnormal human who needs wheelchair and provide it for him. For the purpose of putting these actions into practice, potential method based on environmental information (outline form of obstacle and human skeleton) obtained by visual sensor is proposed. As a result of experiment, avoidance behavior above (1) can be achieved if a human does not put his own hand up, and also assistance behavior above (2) can be achieved if a human puts his own hand up.

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In this paper, we propose a method to recognize traversable obstacles for autonomous mobile robots based on image recognition and motion information. First, we perform data acquisition to gather terrain images and vertical acceleration signal. In order to extract correlation, we compute Canonical Correlation Analysis between image and running features. Using extracted data association, we estimate load of the robot from only image features. Finally, we achieved recognition of traversable obstacles from estimated load.

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This paper discribes an omni-directional movement capable wheeled multi-purpose module system (MMS-V01). The MMS-V01 is composed of 4 modules which are one head module CT01-01, two wheeled modules WM11-01 and one communication module CB10-01. The WM11-01 has 2 mecanum wheels on the same axis. The relationship between the movement of the body and the rotation speed of each wheels is discussed. When the MMS-V01 makes a pivoting movement at a constant speed, the rotational speeds for each wheels are difficult because there is a difference in the moving distance by the position of the wheels. From the simulation results, it is possible to perform a turning motion of MMS-V01 by the rotational speed control of the wheels.

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This paper introduces the mechanical issue of a wheel design capable of step climbing toward more convenient utilization of welfare robots such as wheelchairs and walkers. Despite the promotion of barrier-free environments, uneven floors with dips and depressions, thresholds, and steps have often been encountered in our daily routines. As one solution to overcome these difficulties, a step-climbing mechanism is developed, allowing wheeled robots to ascend a step where the height of the step is higher than the radius of their wheels. What is the most important aspect from the practical point of view is how to realize the mechanism without additional wheels and linear guides. This paper describes the driving mechanism by controlling a moveable wheel axis in detail. Moreover, the proposed mechanism are examined and analyzed through extensive simulations.

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This paper describes a wheel-driven in-pipe robot capable of inspecting a pipe. Its length is about 655 [mm], and its weight is about 3800 [g]. It consists of 3 units such as a front part, a central part and a rear part. Each unit has 2 arms with tires and 2 arms with rollers. A laser sensor and a camera are installed at the front part of the robot to detect the damage of a pipe. Through a horizontal and a vertical movement experiment and an obstacle-climbing experiment the effectiveness of the mechanism of the robot was confirmed.

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This paper describes a study of cooperative self-position estimation of multi robots that based on the distance measurement by Zigbee module. A mobile robot with an acceleration sensor, a gyro sensor and Zigbee module has been made by using a 3D printer. The robot has Raspberry Pi as main controller and has an Arduino Micro as sub controller. As a result of the experiment of using three mobile robots, the positions estimation of each robot was confirmed by measurement each distance between robots.

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This paper proposes a new method for forming microcarries from bacterial cellulose (BC). BC, which is produced by specific bacteria, is a hydrogel composed of a three dimensional network structure formed by cellulose nanofibers. BC as an ECM-like nanofibrous material exhibits an excellent environment for cellular adhesion. Moreover, BC has a high biocompatibility and mechanical strength. From these properties, BC is expected to be applied for microcarriers, which is used for cultivating adhesion dependent cells. Then, we developed a microfabrication process to create BC microcarriers by using gelatin microspheres as sacrificial architectures. In addition, the monodispersity of the fabricated BC microcarreirs was investigated.

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Recently, in many fields such as chemical, food and medical productions, an emulsion has been used widely. Especially, the concentration technique for the emulsion has been an important factor for decreasing the used amount of chemicals and enhancing the efficacy. In this study, we have fabricated an emulsion generation system using an ultrasonic vibration device which has a microchannel to obtain a highly concentrated emulsion. The device can manipulate droplets of the emulsion by making a pressure distribution of a standing acoustic field in the microchannel. Therefore, the emulsion can be concentrated at the junction of the microchannel. The ultrasonic device and the microchannel has been designed by using a finite element method analysis. We evaluated the fabricated device by observing a droplet manipulation experiment of the emulsion.

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This paper introduces a high-speed microscope for simultaneous capturing of well-focused images of moving objects. In recent years, experiments using microscope and microchannel has been activity conducted. However it is difficult to focus the high-speed micro objects through microchannel because general height of microchannel is about 10-100 μm, but depth of focus of object lens is about 1-4 μm. Therefore, we propose the system attaching the piezo actuator to object lens to move the focus position rapidly by vibrating it up and down, and capturing well-focused images. The result of experiments verify the efficacy of our capturing well-focused images of high-speed micro moving objects system.

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In this paper, we report a consideration of three-dimensional imaging method of a single cell by using a general microscopy and vertical rotation of single cell. Different from other methods, this method consciously rotates the target cell to obtain several two dimensional images, and then turn them to a three-dimensional image by imaging process. We believe our method has the potential to obtain three-dimensional image of the cell over a wide range of cell sizes and types. This method opens new research opportunities in three-dimensional cell manipulation, imaging, and analysis.

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For molecular analysis of the rare cells, such as Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs), the single rare cell isolation from the suspension which contains large population of other cells is required. Here, we propose a platform which utilizes surface tension and suction force to array single cells on the microfluidic chip with open channels. Cells flowed to the meniscus of air/liquid interface due to the suction force caused by a suction pump. Then, through surface tension which was generated by the air-liquid interface, the cells were deposited and trapped in the specified pockets surrounded with micropillars. Previously we already succeeded in isolating the rare cell with high speed. We developed a system for cell isolation and pick-up. We purpose to control the position of the air-liquid interface balancing supply and suction pumps. The experiment was performed with human gastric carcinoma cell line (GCIY) cells experiments. By using our isolation methods, the trap rates of cells were nearly 90 %. Also, we utilized mouse CTC model to demonstrate clinical utility of our method. Our platform will be useful for single rare cell analysis because the collected cells could be picked up by glass micro pipette rapidly and easily.

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A concept of no-dialysate micro hemodialysis system is presented and water permeability of the dialysis membrane is discussed in this paper. No-dialysate micro hemodialysis system makes it possible to miniaturize the hemodialysis system, which is mandatory for our ultimate goal of implantable dialysis systems. Water permeability of the dialysis membrane is a crucial parameter to determine the system performance. We highlighted nano-porous poly-ether-sulfone (PES) membrane and developed water-permeable dialysis membrane. We successfully conducted proof of concept experiments of no-dialysis micro hemodialysis system and experimentally found that the thickness of nano porous structure affected water permeability.

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This paper proposes a microbe culture system in an open environment using hydrogel micro tubes. Oil production microbes, such as Aurantiochytrium, have been discovered to produce fuels instead of fossil fuels. Biomass production by microbes is promising, where scale-up, competition against other microbes and collection of the products are the major challenges. Here, we propose to use hydrogel micro tubes to encapsulate, protect, and culture microbes. The tubes can be micro- and mass-fabricated. They prevent competitive microbes from intruding inside while they allow oxygen and nutrition to permeate through. The byproducts can be collected together with the tubes. In this paper, we demonstrate the proof-of-concepts experiments: we fabricated hydrogel micro tubes and cultured lactic acid producing microbes inside the tubes. The microbes were protected and increased inside the tubes even when competitive microbes existed in the culture media. Their byproducts were successfully collected with the micro tubes.

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Microdialysis is a method to continuously measure the chemical concentration near target areas inside a living being. However, the method needs more than 10 minutes to collect solutions including chemical materials, leading to the less temporal information of the chemical concentration. In order to obtain more precise temporal information, we develop a microfluidic device with a T-junction to generate a long slug flow. The collected solutions are to be measured with a mass-spectrometer, which needs 2 μL for the measurement in the required range for the chemical analysis. At 2 μL/min in flow rate of phosphate buffer solution (PBS) and silicone oil, the longest slugs were generated, corresponding to 24.2 sec. This duration is close to our target of 1min at 2 μL/min in flow rate of PBS, which may be achieved by connecting the slugs.

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Cancer cells inside tumors are under low glucose and oxygen concentration, which increase the migration capability and are assumed to be an origin of cancer metastasis. However, the cellular level studies of cancer cells inside tumors are difficult due to the limitation of the conventional biological approaches, which cannot generate the conditions inside tumors. In order to overcome the difficulty, we design and fabricate a microfluidic device that can control the glucose and oxygen concentrations inside a micro chamber. We achieved the concentration gradients similar to the gradient inside a tumor.

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This paper proposes the measurement method for the on-chip cellular mechanical characteristics. In the previous research, we succeeded in the actuation of on-chip kinetic structures at high precision for the characterization of cells. However, there was a serious problem with respect to the sensing accuracy on the observation process. For the detailed and precise characterization of cellular mechanical properties, we need to improve the sensing resolution of probe positions and to identify the precise characteristics of the force sensor. Therefore we employed an effective method to utilize the phase detection of moire fringe. This method realized high resolution displace measurement, hence highly accurate calibration of the force sensor. Finally we succeeded in measuring the detailed mechanical characteristics of cells compared to our previous method.

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In recent years, biological fields such as regenerative medicine require continuous non-invasive transportation of large population of cell in culture media. Conventional methods achieved this purpose by using different kinds of pump. However, no systems have developed which are capable of investigating the invasiveness of these pumps, quantitatively. Therefore, optimization of cell transportation system remains a problem. In this paper, we constructed a system for investigation of the invasiveness of pumps, quantitatively. In addition, by using this system we succeeded in investigating the invasiveness of peristaltic pump with three types of gap. The result indicated that the pump with wider gap has less invasiveness when conducted the transportation of C2C12 cell.

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In many fields, such as medicine and cosmetics production, it is an important proposition to generate small and uniform droplets of various liquids. In order to realize these droplets' generation, we have been using a bolt-clamped Langevin-type transducer and a micropore plate. The purpose of this study is to fabricate a bolt-clamped Langevin-type transducer having separated structure for cleaning, and to generate droplets by using this device. First, we have proposed a new structure, and designed a bolt-clamped Langevin-type transducer which consists of some separated parts. Next, we have generated and evaluated droplets in the air by using pure water. When the micro pore diameter, the applied air pressure and the resonance frequency were 50μm, 100kPa and 37kHz, the average diameter of pure water droplets and standard deviation of diameter were 169.1μm and 3.44, respectively.

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On chip cell analysis is one of important issues in micro technology research area. One approach to control the fluid flow in microfluidic devices for cell analysis is using appropriate pumps. However, it is difficult to control actual flow rate in microfluidic devices due to difficulty to put flow rate sensors in the microfluidic devices. In this work, we develop a real-time flow rate control system using syringe pumps and high-speed vision which can measure actual fluid flow in microfluidic devices. The developed flow-rate control system is verified through microparticle velocity control experiment and microparticle sorting experiments.

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Platelet transfusions are expected to be short in the future due to the donor decrease and its 4-days short storage life. Therefore it is necessary to show the process of the production of platelets from megakaryocyte (MKs) in order to produce artificial platelets ex vivo in high rate. Therefore, having focused on the effect of shear stress on MKs, we proposed on-chip monitoring system of the MKs in shear flow environment. On-chip monitoring system consists of microfluidic chip, flow control part and observation part. It can apply controlled shear flow to MKs and monitor MKs because of its transparency. In this research, we fabricated microfluidic chip by using MEMS technique and demonstrated on-chip monitoring of the megakaryocyte. At last. we confirmed that the platelets collected from our chip had the characteristics receptor by using FACS analysis.

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Authors have been discussing an information-gathering system using mobile robots and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in post-disaster underground space. WSN is able to provide a monitoring system and wireless communication infrastructure in post-disaster environment. This system is a network configured of a number of wireless communication devices called Sensor node (SN). In our system, mobile robots carry SNs and deploy them into underground space to construct WSN. This paper shows a throughput measurement method using communication packet of tele-operating mobile robot in between mobile robot and SN. Then a performance of the proposed method was evaluated by comparing measuring accuracy of existing method in field test. Then availability of our proposed method was confirmed by experimental results.

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When the tele-operated mobile robot went over its communication range accidentally, the operation would be suspended. We named this kind of trouble "the distress of mobile robot". In order to prevent the distress of mobile robot, it is necessary to estimate communications conditions in the unknown environment information by means of radio wave propagation simulation. Then it need the radio wave propagation simulation and the environment shape data. In this paper, we generate the environment map for radio wave propagation simulation.

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When the tele-operated mobile robot went over its communication range accidentally, the operation would be suspended. We named this kind of trouble "the distress of mobile robot". In order to prevent the distress of mobile robot, it is necessary to estimate communications conditions around the robot by means of radio wave propagation simulation. We aim to prove radio wave propagation simulation is effective method to prevent "the distress of mobile robot" For the simulation, the environment model around the robot is needed, which consists from its shape and permittivity. In this paper, we describe about the 3D shape map generated from depth sensory data.

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Living organisms are capable of self-reproduction, self-repair, and high adaptability by dynamically changing their control strategy and mechanical properties. By applying biological materials such as cells and tissues to a robot, the resultant biomachine hybrid system is able to be significant biological functions that are beyond a traditional robot. In this study, a cell tactile sensor was developed in which cultured cells were used as living tactile receptors. The sensor possessed self-organizing sensitivity and could distribute its receptors for selective sensing of certain tactile information based on the history of the mechanical stimuli applied by the training. The experimental results revealed that the mechanical stimuli produced significant changes in the receptors, and the sensor detected selectively certain mechanical stimulus. We thus successfully realized a novel cell tactile sensor that was environmentally adaptable.

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