This paper presents a laser-based tracking of people using two sensor nodes fixed in an environments (infra-sensor nodes). Our system consists of two sensor nodes equipped with four-layered laser scanner (LS) and a central server. After the network among the server and sensor nodes is connected automatically, the laser measurements captured by the sensor nodes are collected to the central server. Based on the laser measurements, the relative posture of two sensor nodes is calculated based on Corresponding Vector Fitting Sample and Consensus (CVFSAC) method, and the server begins people detection and tracking; the server extracts the position data of people by background subtraction method. By using the position data of people, heuristic-rule-based and global-nearest-neighbor-based data association identifies multiple people in crowded environments. Their identified people are tracked via model-based tracker; the interacting-multi-model (IMM) estimator is applied to tracking people with sudden changes in motion; walking, running or stopping. Experimental results of tracking 18 people validate the effectiveness of our method.

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Brain Computer Interface (BCI) is a system that controls machines and devices by extracting neural information from human brain activity and it is expected for nursing robot such as an artificial hand. The present study focuses on BCI that uses near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). However a conventional detection method of brain activity is simple thresholding. Therefore, it is difficult obtain highly accurate control operations. In this study, we developed an NIRS-BCI system with the neural network. This system can detect the intention from human brain activity and output on/off signal in real time. Performance evaluation of the sysem showed the correct rate using virtual NIRS signal was 97.9% and the average correct rate using NIRS signal measured from 10 participants was 61.8%.

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In order to increase the operational efficiency of air traffic, punctuality and reduction of flight time are necessary. Increasing the accuracy of the flight time estimation calculated by using weather prediction model, it is important to know the trend of errors between the actual wind and weather prediction model, and correct the errors using the knowledge of the trend. The wind speeds of real flight data are calculated by the difference between ground speed and true airspeed obtained by SSR Mode S system, and compared with Local Forecast Model (LFM) provided by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). This paper presents the daily variation of wind speed and the wind speed difference between actual data and forecast model by box plot. For clarifying the time difference of the wind data, wind speed is plotted over the box plot with the color whose hue is associated with the time. In order to investigate the relation between actual wind speed variation and the precision of forecast model, inter quartile ranges of actual wind speed versus wind speed difference between actual data and forecast model are also demonstrated. As for the airway, the flight over mountainous area and sea area are compared to investigate the wind speed variations of mountain wave.

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Identification of human emotion from brain activities has been attracted in various research fields as neuromarketing and BCI (Brain Computer Interface). In previous research we used the 42 channel measurement of NIRS (Near-infrared Spectroscopy). But it is not suitable for long measurement. In this study, we propose a method to detect the pleasant and unpleasant emotion from measurement of brain activity using portable NIRS system. Experimental results showed that three different emotions (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral) were detected using back propagation neural network .The method can detect three emotion of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral with the actuary of 82.4% (the highest) and 65.5% (average).

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Road roughness is usually considered as a cause of drivers' discomfort. However, steering pulls caused by road roughness such as ruts also contribute to the higher risk of accidents. In order to reduce the risk, the road maintenance is necessary. However, objective evaluations of influences of road roughness on drivers were rarely investigated. In this study, with steering pulls occurring in the process of lane change on rutted road focused, an evaluation of influences on drivers based on Electromyography signals (EMG signals) is proposed. A road experiment and a DS experiment are conducted for the evaluation.

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Recently, the number of traffic accidents is decreasing due to the development of advanced safety technologies. However, it is difficult to select an appropriate speed to pass the non-signalized intersection without a regulation stop sign for elderly drivers who do not drive with risk prediction. To support such drivers, this study aims to construct an expert driver model based on the risk potential field. This paper describes the method of a parameter estimation of the driver model in the situation that a driver passes through an unknown intersection. First, driving data of a person in the scenes of various intersections are acquired from the experiment in the Driving Simulator. Next, by using the driving data, the parameters of the driver model are estimated. Then, the proposed method estimates the parameters to pass the unknown intersection by analysing the relationship between the known driver parameters and the known intersection shape factors stored in the database. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing estimated parameters with the ground-truth parameters.

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The premise of driving support systems is to reduce a driver's load and traffic accidents as a whole. However, we feared that such systems can degenerate a driver's ability by causing an overreliance on driving assistance systems consciously and/or unconsciously. Therefore, we previously produced an assistance system that reduces encounters with accident factors by helping the driver turn their attention back to safe driving methods. This paper examined the timing of appropriate the assistance system. In previous experiments, the driver was preferred timing that find for event immediately after providing information. Therefore, we installed the system in a driving simulator and conducted an experiment of appropriate timing by changing the field of view in the day and night. As a result, the suitable timing has changed. However it is reasonable to provide at a littele earlier timing.

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Aging rate of Japan society, especially in remote islands area, has been increasing. In those remote islands area, it is important to keep public transportation system and the system should be more accessible for elderly people. Then we have been developing the new small-craft transportation system that passengers don't have to change vehicles/vessels between land and sea. Based on the field experiment, it was verified that the receptivity of the concept of the new transportation system is high for the residents in the remote islands area.

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Aging rate of Japan society, especially in remote islands area, has been increasing. In those remote islands area, it is important to keep public transportation system and the system should be more accessible for elderly people. Then we have been developing a new small-craft for experiments. The small-craft has an embarking-disembarking system for a small bus transportation system. Then passengers don't have to change vehicles/vessels between land and sea. In this paper, we show a structure and test results of the embarking-disembarking system. Also, we discuss an auto control method for the system with a model ship and a model vehicle.

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In these days, a disk brake is widely used among many vehicles. It consists of Pad, Rotor, Caliper and Retainer. When the brake is applied, sometimes a loud and high pitched squeal occurs. It has become a significant problem. Unfortunately, as performance of the brake becomes better, this noise occurs more frequently. Therefore, there has been a lot of discussion about the brake. But, the mechanism of the brake squeal has not been clarified yet. It has been fully studied that researches on materials and structures of the brake, but few studies have focused on the constraints of the pad in the caliper. So, I conducted research on it by moving the pad artificially by using coil spring and round bar

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In previous study it was clarified that changing of grip position of handle counteracts drivers' maintenance of appropriate steering angle, therefore, we developed the bar type steering system with low steering gear ratio. The difficulty of steering operation with low steering gear ratio at high speed was improved by adjusting steering reaction and the usability of bar type steering and steering wheel were analyzed by using driving simulator. Here, we report the maneuverability of bar type steering was superior to that of steering wheel at high speed range.

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Automatic pedestrian collision avoidance system that operates automatic steering and/or automatic braking to avoid collision with pedestrians is examined in this research. We simulate situation in which pedestrian suddenly walks across a road, and calculate the avoidance success rate. Thus, we clarify the effectiveness region of automatic steering and automatic breaking to avoid the collision with pedestrians.

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This paper describes a method of driving force distribution for independent wheel drive vehicles on irregular ground. The optimal driving force distribution improves the off-road vehicle traveling performance. The driving force distribution of four drive wheels based on the wheel vertical load and slip ratio was proposed. Straight-traveling tests on uneven rigid ground and soft ground were carried out by a model vehicle in order to examine the proposed method. The results of proposed method were compared with the ones of the distribution based on the only wheel vertical load, the even distribution, and the wheel velocity control. As the results, it was confirmed that the proposed method was the most stable and efficient on uneven rigid ground for vehicle movement. The proposed method was the most stable and as efficient as the wheel velocity control on uneven soft ground.

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Electric vehicle (EV) has been intensively studied in the last decade due to their environment friendly characteristics. However, the miles-per-charge of EV is shorter than that of internal combustion engine vehicles. To improve miles-per-charge, the authors' group has proposed Range Extension Autonomous Driving (READ) system which minimizes consumption energy by optimizing velocity profile. But conventional system can be applied to only straight driving. Therefore this paper extends READ to be applied to not only straight driving but also curvy road. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulations and experiments.

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This paper presents a posture control method based on estimating shape of steps with LRF for rescue robots during running over stairs. In disaster area, rescue robots are needed to help injured people under broken houses, buildings and so on, instead of rescue workers. Then, the robots require high skills to be controlled, because the robots are operated by remote control with wireless cameras. Especially, in case of running over steps to go to upstairs to find victims, it is hard to recognize a depth between robots and steps for operators with wireless cameras. In this paper, we propose a method for identification of shapes of steps using LRF and angle control for sub crawlers of the rescue robot. First, we present a method in order to identify a slope angle of stairs with LRF. Second, we construct an ideal slope with wooden plates and show a validity of our proposed method. Then, selection method of measured points for accurate calculation of estimation for the slope angle is considered. Third, a performance of the method is examined for actual stairs in building of our campus. Finally, it is shown that our constructed rescue robot recognizes the angle of the slope and runs over the stairs with controlling posture of the robot with sub crawlers

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This paper investigates an optimal control maneuver of a skid-steer small unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). The optimal control problem is prescribed as a minimum-time maneuver of the UGV, and it is solved using pseudospectral (PS) optimal control theory. The optimal trajectory which includes the pivot-turn maneuver is provided to the real UGV system as reference input commands, and the vehicle tracks it by the gain-scheduled feedback law on the vehicle position error. The results provide nominal tracking performance and validate the feasibility of the approach.

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In this work, we studied vehicle maneuverability of an innovative push-pull steering system. In the past work, we developed a new assisted human powered vehicle with the steering system. There are two ways of steering in this vehicle, and the handling mechanisms are different. One is push-pull steering, and the other is skid-steer. We investigated the feature of both ways of steering from the ergonomics perspective and evaluated vehicle maneuverability of the steering combination. From the experiment, we observed that the combination with skid-steer required less force to steer. Therefore, it is more efficient to steer by the combination of skid-steer and push-pull steering.

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This paper describes a fault-tolerant flight control method using a simple adaptive controller with a PID controller (PID-SAC). The main scope of the present paper is to control an aircraft by using a PID-SAC controller even if the dynamic characteristics change due to aircraft accidents. In this paper, we show the simulation and flight experiment results under the case where the position of the center of gravity suddenly changes. Through the simulation, we demonstrate the superiority of new control method by comparing it with conventional control method. One of the biggest advantage of a PID-SAC approach is high extensibility to another control scheme.

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Airplanes, ships, trains and automobiles have a common feature that human operators control the vehicle. In order to improve controlability and usability, simulators and human models are used in development of them. Some examples for automobile design are introduced.

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Small unmanned aircraft called drone are rapidly utilized since 2000's. This paper will review the history of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), firstly. Secondly, application fields will be summarized based on the type of UAVs, such as a multicopter, a helicopter and a fixed wing aircraft. Thirdly, not only technical but also non-technical problems will be considered for achieving safety operations of UAVs. Regulations to be established by ICAO and each country's authority will be examined.

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