This paper discusses a method of estimating moving distance using single inertial sensor. The distance is estimated by performing the reaching movement using the linear guide. Then, a sensor is attached to a wrist to perform reaching movement and estimate moving distance of the hand. In addition, the moving distance of hand by during driving motion is eitimated using a driving simulator.

Ingestion of food and water is an important part of human life support. However, as we age, oral sensation and saliva secretion decline, so it tends to be difficult to swallow. The elderly persons often suffer from aspiration, such as choking when food gets stuck in the throat or pneumonia when it enters the lungs. As the evaluation test, there are many method such as conventional screening tests such as repetitive saliva swallowing test (RSST), water swallowing test (MWST), food test (FT), cough test, and pre- and post-swallowing radiography (SwXP). However, these screening tests require help of the professional persons who also have specialized knowledge to perform the tests, such as occupational therapists and speech pathologists. In this study, we developed a simple non-contact sensing system for eating and swallowing motions using image processing. By observing the image of the throat and capturing the movements with optical flow, we analyzed the motions of the feature points on the throat and we were able to discriminate between chewing and swallowing.

In recent years, the shortage of successors has become a serious problem in the manufacturing industry due to the declining birthrate and the aging of skilled workers. To tackle this problem, a new education and training systems utilizing ICT technology that improves the efficiency of education is required. In this paper, we focused on the education of welding work and proposed a new work evaluation system that visualizes arc welding operations and evaluates the similarity with skilled workers. The proposed method can extract low-dimensional feature vectors from measured welding torch postures and current and voltage values, and accurately classifies them into multiple clusters acquired by unsupervised learning. The experimental results showed that the proposed system achieved high classification performance and suggested the possibility of using them for training in welding operations.

Estimating the affect of motorcycle drivers can improve safety measures during the drive. Previous researches have been attempting to predict people’s affect by employing the machine learning model and biosignals such as ECG and EEG. This paper proposes a novel real-time affect recognition method using multimodal biosignals employing knowledge distillation (KD) that enables the proposed model to estimate the driver’s affect using only ECG. An experiment involving 28 subjects was conducted to measure their biosignals when watching 360 videos with VR. Though the proposed model only utilized ECG during the test, experimental results demonstrated that it could achieve a satisfying performance.

The effect of the surface texturing effect of shot blasting on the wettability of stainless steel was evaluated. As a result of using various projection materials, high water repellency was obtained by using iron-based particles. The reason for this was taken into account by the theory of wettability. It was clarified that the surface roughness when iron-based particles were used had a large height parameter and a small spacing parameter. Furthermore, it was confirmed that an air layer was trapped between the water droplet and the surface. From this, it is considered that the reason why the water repellency is high is that the Cassie-Baxter state was obtained.

Cell sorting is important in cell biology, cell engineering and regenerative medicine. We produced visible light-responsive cell scaffolds by using photo-thermogenic gold nanoparticles and thermally denatured collagen to construct a new image-guided cell sorting system. Various kinds of cells, such as tumor cells, epithelial cells, nerve cells and human iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes, were cultured on it, which were selectively detached from the substrates by visible laser irradiation. Because severe cytotoxicity was not observed on the gold nanoparticle-containing collagen gels and bilayer coatings, they are a possible cell-friendly selective cell detachment system.

Recently, cell modification technology is attracting attention and there is a possibility to change various forms of cell and organ. Cell modification technology have various methods: e.g., virus vector method and lipofection method, but these methods have problems on the efficiency and cells survival rate of the modification. In contrast, our photochemical cell membrane perforation method has high efficiency and mass cell processing ability adequate for various cell therapies, but the method requires cell membrane perforator which takes time for production. In this research, we describe the latest progress about the perforator by injection molding machine and its surface modification.