WristCare is the world's first healthcare device, which monitors the user's well-being 24 hours a day. During the first four days of use, it studies the user's normal activity level and well-being by measuring movement/micro-movement, skin temperature and skin conductivity. If the WristCare system notices a significant change in the user's activity level or well-being, it automatically sends an alarm to the alarm recipient. This way information about the changes reaches its destination in the fastest possible way. The user does not have to worry about the alarms: WristCare automatically sends information about changes even in cases when the user is not able to evaluate his/her own well-being and is not able to send a manual alarm. This is why the WristCare system enables the elderly and chronically ill persons, for example, to live at home for longer than would otherwise be the case. The system also makes home care more efficient, improves the activities of sheltered accommodation(assisted living arrangements)and hospitals.

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This paper proposes an IR camera system that performs the task of removing mines for humanitarian purposes. Because of the high risks involved, it is necessary to conduct mine detection from the most remote endeavoring. By making use of infrared ray(IR)cameras, scattered mines can be detected from remote locations. In the case of mines buried in the ground, detection is possible if the peripheral temperature difference is large enough between the ground and mine weapon. As one of the worlds advanced nations in sensor technology, Japan should promote surveys and studies for detecting mines safely studies for detecting mines safely by using its advanced remote sensing technologies.

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A new technology to harden titanium surface was developed by using heat treatment in the atmosphere including H_2O at the reduction of pressure. We obtained the hardened metallic mirror surface of titanium.

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Reducing structural vibration is essential for achieving high-accuracy, high-speed head positioning for hard disk drives. Increasing main-resonance frequency is important for achieving high-accuracy head positioning. Main-resonance vibration mode has been analyzed. Using a rigid-body, two-degree-of-freedom model, an analytical eigenvalue of main-resonance vibration mode has been obtained. A method to obtain a main-resonance vibration mode sensitivity considering the rigid-body translational vibration mode and the first-order bending mode has been proposed. The results of the simulations and experiments prove that this main-resonance vibration mode design method is useful for designing high-accuracy, high-speed head positioning mechanisms for hard disk drives.

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SPRING DRIVE Cal.7R the world was heralded, and it was commercialized in December, 1999. Cal.7R is electron speed control style mechanical watch which raised the time accuracy taking the mainspring as a power by electronic speed control. We report necessary starting mechanism in Cal.7R development.

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In designing the self-organization robot, we show the policy which solves the problems by miniaturizing the self-organization robot. And by miniaturizing the self-organization robot, it is possible that the robot number per unit product and composition degree of freedom increase. Therefore in this paper, transfer method for enabling the transfer between robots only in the deformation mechanism of the robot is proposed without using wheels and crawlers, transfer legs, etc. In addition, shape memory alloy actuator viewed as one of the microactuator with hope was adopted to the deformation mechanism of the robot. The robot makes shape change from the triangle to hexagonal by the shape memory alloy actuator. And, the robot was manufactured actually, and usefulness such as structure and mechanism was examined and was examined experimentally.

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[in Japanese]

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