To assist elderly people with physical disability, an autonomous mobile system has been needed. Wehave been studying the method to navigate such a mobile for institutional care. Installation of this autonomous mobile has to be easy. Therefore we use light markers to guide the mobile. The markers are fixed to the ceiling at certain intervals. A powered wheelchair is driven according to the position of markers taken by a CCD camera with a wide angle lens. The field of view of the camera is divided using mirrors to get images in multiple directions concurrently. Since our system will be used in the institutes for elderly people, we assume that the environment is structured. From this assumption, all expected obstacles are walking persons around the mobile. To detect persons on the way, ultrasonic range finders are equipped to the front of the mobile. A prototype software to control the wheelchair was developed. Evaluation in an experimental configuration showed that our system can improve the quality of life(QOL)of elderly people, as well as decrease the burden of carers.

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We have already reported a stenographic typewriting system which can display the spoken Japanese to the hearing impaired people on a screen without delay and without abridgment. However, this system has some problems about the readabilities of the texts and the keystroke characteristics of the typewriter. New STENOPCON system.(STENograph OPerated speech CONversion system)has been developed as to overcome these problems. Much Chinese characters displayed in the texts, the automatic space characters insertion algorithm, the editing and correcting function for the mistakes or for the wrong stenographic conversions and the changing function of the character size have brought higher readabilities of the texts. The system has been experimentally demonstrated at some meetings of the hearing impaired people. The audience could easily understand the delicate and subtle expression of Japanese speech by the system. An improvement based on the measurement of operating force for the STENOPCON keyboard has been made. In order to verify this improvement an experiment has been undertaken using three stenotypists. We have found that they opearted the improved STENOPCON with fewer mistakes and with less fatigue than with the old model.

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