Micrometer-order gears and motors have been fabricated on silicon substrates using semiconductor technologies since the middle of the 1980s. Currently, much research is being carried out to improve these fabrication methods. However, there is a disadvantage in these methods which use photofabrication technology; only flat machines can be fabricated using the two-dimensional process. The purpose of this study is to resolve the problem mentioned above by assembling two-dimensional microcomponents fabricated by photofabrication technology using a micro manipulator which can handle microcomponents directly.In this study, SMA (shape-memory alloy) was selected as the actuator material of the end-effector. By this study, I developed the manipulation system which could of high-accuracy positioning work more by establishing a small high-accuracy positioning system in a holder part of end effector. when I build a micro manipulation system, a positioning system works in a limited area of SEM, and there is not it, and therefore miniaturization is possible, and it is necessary to work during vacuums normally as well if there is not it. therefore miniaturization is possible and I have to work during vacuums normally as well and used SMA as an actuator as the method of settlement and there is not vibration and is advantageous in that it moves smoothly.confirmed availability of this system by experimenting.

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[in Japanese]

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The main purpose of this research is to realize a MEMS optical switch which has a simple structure, large reflecting angle with small strain and free from wear. The optical switch consists of two substrates and a belt-shaped thin film mirror between the substrates. The thin film mirror is deformed and driven by electrostatic force. In the previous research, the driving voltage of the switch is more than 80V. This paper shows the results that the driving voltage of the switch is reduced by fabricating the high dielectric constant layers on the substrates. The experimental results show that the optical switch is driven by the driving voltage 40V.

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[in Japanese]

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Recently, the techniques of micro/nano-manipulation for producing micro/nano-scaled devices such as a MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System) have attracted a lot of people's attention. Micro/nano-scaled objects, however, are basically difficult to be manipulated precisely since the adhesional force becomes significant;thus the objects are likely to stick to the others. Therfore, by considering the adhesional phenomenon, we investigate the machanical behavior of an elestic cylinder with a 10-to-100-nanometerzed diameter in adhesive contact with a rigid surface using a finite element method with implimentation of a potential energy between the surfaces. We numerically calculate the contact widths for the specified the cylinder radii under several loading conditions. Additionally, we discuss the feasibility of this analyzing technique and a prospective similator of micro/nano-manpulation by comparing these relusts with the Kalker's theory.

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For the manipulation of micro-object under Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with high repeatability, the manipulation by electrostatic force with controlling electric field is suggested. In this case, charging micro-object intentionally by electron-beam of SEM is required. It′s absolutely essential that the charging-mechanism of the micro-object under SEM is considered. In this study, we formulate the charging-mechanism of the micro-object under SEM, and obtain the dominant equation of this case. Moreover, we solve this equation analytically and obtain two phases of charging mode of the micro-object that depends on the magnitude relation between electron beam (primary electron) and secondary electron. If electron beam is larger than secondary electron, micro-object is charged negatively and charge of the micro-object diverges to negative infinity. On the other hand, if electron beam is less than secondary electron, micro-object is charged positively and charge of the micro-object converges to positive charge. Finally, we verify the model by observing the charging mode of the micro-object at some acceleration voltage of SEM.

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[in Japanese]

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A number of research groups have been developing nanofabrication methods based on DNA self-assembly. This paper describes the design of a new DNA nanostructures (″Plasmid glasses″) is combined the plasmid DNA and the protein. An experiment has been performed using two types of 200bp DNA (vector DNA) and 30bp DNA (insert DNA) to form the plasmid DNA by ligase. The vector DNA was obtained by cutting pBR322 (natural plasmid) using two types of enzyme. The insert DNA was labeled biotin to combine the two plasmid DNA using streptavidin. After ligation and added streptavidin, we obtained the ″plasmid glasses″ by the electrophoresis and the atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM micrographs show the ″plasmid glasses″ with diameter of 21.4-24.4nm, which is almost the same as the theoretical values.

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Recently, the researches of painless function needle are advanced to treat disabilities due to a cerebral disorder. The painless function needle can move freely into a brain, and it can give an electrical excitement and medicine to a brain cell directly. This needle must be flexible and accommodate to a living body. We use a hair for this purpose. In this research, we covered the hair with denatured fluoric resin paint to protect the hair and to get a smooth surface. In addition, we fabricated grooves in parts of resin and tip of the needle by UV laser.

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[in Japanese]

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Realization of an advanced technology for a micro-assembly center in the micro-factory to aim at high added value affects the spread of SOHO in the near future, and therefore, miniatualization technique for high precision assembly is indispensability. We developed the the micro-feeder with integrated structure for storage and orientation of miniature parts as the upstream stage equipment of the linear micro-feeder. In this report, the feeder with the only 2 legs was also proposed. The constitution is not completely considered until now, because, it is absurd. We succeeded in spiral feeding of 1608 tip capacitor on a bowl mounting disk plate, φ30mm diameter.

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We have previously shown that a saw-tooth surface with only horizontal vibration, simple planar and symmetric, can feed along microparts. The microparts move forward because they adhere to the saw-tooth surface more in the backward direction than in the forward direction. Previously, we studied the effect of the pitch of the saw-tooth surface and the vibration frequency on the movement of 2012-type capacitors (length:2.0 mm, width:1.2mm, height:0.6mm, weight: 7.5mg). In the present study, we investigated the movement of a smaller capacitors 0603-type capacitors (length:0.6mm, width:0.3mm, height:0.3mm, weight: 0.3mg) and compared them with those of the larger capacitor. For the smaller capacitors, the fastest feeding was realized when the pitch was 0.05mm and elevation angle was 20deg. The smaller capacitors moved slower than the larger capacitors because the former were affected more by adhesion force. In addition, the smaller capacitors dispersed more than the larger capacitors.

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A new ultra-precision profiler was developed to measure X-ray and EUV optics such as asymmetric and aspheric profiles. Using the high precision rotational movements, the normal vectors at each points on the surface are determined by the reflected light beam goes back exactly on the same path as the incident beam. In the present study, it has achieved the nanometer measurement accuracy in an elliptical profile mirror for nanometer hard X-ray fousing In addition, it showed that our instrument had the ability to measure a plane mirror of 1m and sphered mirror of the radius curvature 300mm.In this paper we tried 3 dimensional measurement of an off-axis parabolic mirror.

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Carbon nano pillars with different length are fabricated by focused ion beam chemical vapor deposition (FIB-CVD) under varying the growth time. These carbon nano pillars have 100 nm diameter and 5-30 μm length. In scanning electron microscope (SEM), each pillar is excited by thermal noise. The resonant characteristics of carbon nano pillars are measured from secondary electron signals obtained by irradiating the edge of pillars with electron beam of the SEM. We confirmed that the Young's modulus calculating from the resonant frequency is different for the length. One of the main reasons for the different Young's modulus is that FIB-CVD has the different growth rate for the length.

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A method for measuring of a micro-roughness on a silicon (Si) wafer surface has been developed by using the developed measuring system for nano-particles diameter by light scattering method. In this paper, evaluation for the detectable spatial wavelength characteristics is described on the measuring method for micro-roughness using the nano-particle system.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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In order to develop a load calacity calculation standard for injection molded plastic gears, Technical Committee on Molded Plastic Gears at JSPE organized a subcommittee on load calacity calculation standard in April 2005. The present report describes the activities and the prospect in the subcommittee.

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Injection molded plastic gears generally have a web-rim construction to keep high accuracy of tooth geometry. The present report describes the effect of rim thickness on load capacity through experiments and finite element analyses.

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This paper describes the development of a plastic worm gear test machine and the preparatory experimental results. The test machine for plastic worm gears was newly developed, in which the center distance and shaft angle are variable and the transmission efficiency can be measured. Preparatory experiments were carried out using a commercial steel worm and plastic helical gears (worm wheel) under various running conditions. The effects of torques and rotational speeds on the gear teeth temperatures and transmission efficiencies between meshing gear teeth were determined.

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We measured the efficiency and the noise of the plastic worm gear drives with the module 0.5 mm and the lead angle 5- 8 degrees. The worm and the worm wheel of the drives are made of a polyacetal (POM) and a brass (C3604), respectively. As the result of the experiments, it was found that the lubrication with a grease increases the efficiency more than 10 percents, and the worm gear with the lead angle 8 degree provides 10 percents higher efficiency than that with the lead angle 5 degree. Also, the noise in operating increases proportionally with the rotational speed of the worm, and is hardly influenced by an applied torque.

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The injection molding plastic gears are used in such many fields as for domestic electrical products, information-processing equipment, audio-visual equipments, automobiles and so on. Many factors have an effect on load carrying characteristics of an injection molding plastic gear pair. Among others, the plastic materials and the temperature in plastics are the most important factors, because the plastic physical property is greatly different in each plastics type, and the high temperature in plastics causes the decrease in the modulus of longitudinal elasticity. In this study, the performance of the injection molding plastic gears is compared by the experiments from the point of strength and bulk temperature. The effect was investigated on two conditions, such as the transmitting torque and the bulk temperature of gear.

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The plastic gear receives the effect of friction heat and hysteresis heat, and the temperature rises with the operating time, and the elastic modulus lowers. And, the material allowable bending stress lowers, and the strength of the gear weakens. Therefore, it seems to be very important to estimate ″Heat″ in order to more accurately know the strength of the plastic gear. This simulation software gives friction heat and hysteresis exothermic reaction in the operation of the gear, and in addition, it estimates the temperature of the gear considering the heat radiation of operation condition. Then, the elastic modulus is estimated at allowable stress. In this paper, reliability and experimental result of the software are reported.

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We measured the noise of the plastic spur and helical gears with the deformed layer. As result of the experiments, it was found that the equivalent noise level of helical gears with thick deformed layer of polyacetal homo-polymer in the low speed and low load driving is lower than that of helical gears of copolymer.

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[in Japanese]

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A Philosophy of Global Scale Brain (GSB) has existed as Gaia since Greek times. Along a line of recent rapid development of Internet, However, it is based on a human imagination. The networks around the earth seem to be neurons and synapses as a human brain. They offer many aspects such as growing, evolving, self-controlling phenomenon and intelligence. There are lots of rooms to study GSP. This short paper presents problems on GSB and some approaches to GSB how to deal with them from a viewpoint of Smart Engineering.

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[in Japanese]

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In recent years, handling items, the address for delivery, etc. are diversified in the distribution center. Therefore it is important to form effective packing plan. However, since it is difficult to form an effective plan in fact, it depends for a packing plan on experience of the worker of the spot. In this research, the system which draws up the effective packing plan using GA was developed.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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In this study, component based decentralized cooperative control system has been proposed for improving operating technology of multi-jointed manipulator, and the principle and basic structure of control system has been discussed. And we propose new-type component based decentralized cooperative control system to realize the additional links and changes structure of manipulator without to change the configuration of component controller. Although position, posture and trajectory control of end-effector has been realized only about manipulator with revolute joints. In this paper, local inverse kinematics for not only revolute joint but also prismatic joint is newly added to position inverse kinematics in component controller. We show that concept of local inverse kinematics and end-effector trajectory can be controlled by the manipulator mixed revolute and prismatic joints.

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The objective of this paper is to represent a virtual muscle oscillation method (VMO) by Communicating Sequential Process (CSP). CSP is a formal language for parallel processes, developed by Hoare in 1978, and CSP is well known about its mathematical foundation. On the other hand, VMO is a highly modularized robot motion generation method, and VMO is applied to a hobby robot control. By representing VMO motion generation method by CSP, it is possible to verify a control process of a robot by VMO more mathematically.

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[in Japanese]

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A Philosophy of Global Scale Brain (GSB) has existed as Gaia since Greek times. Along a line of recent rapid development of Internet, However, it is based on a human imagination. The networks around the earth seem to be neurons and synapses as a human brain. They offer many aspects such as growing, evolving, self-controlling phenomenon and intelligence. There are lots of rooms to study GSP. This short paper presents problems on GSB and some approaches to GSB how to deal with them from a viewpoint of Smart Engineering.

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This paper presents the process of calibration method about camera-projector system. Fundamental matrix is calculated width the use of projected points from projector. After calculation of fundamental matrix, projection matrixes are assumed. A standard cube is reconstructed by projective reconstruction. Parameters of camera and projector are calculated with the use of projective reconstructed standard cube.

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When color of illumination changes, color recognition by a robot becomes difficult. This paper proposes a method of color recognition that is robust for illumination change. The method consists of three steps. First step is making a look-up table that is robust for brightness change. Second step is estimating color of illumination that can be done real time. Last step is updating the look-up table to adapt to illumination changes. Experiments using the AIBO's camera verify the proposed method.

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The purpose of studies is to develop a system which detects the position of an object sized micrometer like an alga. At the beginning, system takes a sheet of still pictures out dynamic picture image of an object photographed with a CCD camera. Next, it matches the image to a prepared image of the object and specifies a location of it. We use two kinds of checking methods, and make system responsive to rotations of an object. System is able to detect a position of a object on the condition that a error is 6% or less by converting a specified position to numerical value like μm unit.

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It is very important to guarantee the quality of the industrial products by means of visual inspection. In order to reduce the soldering defect of terminal deformation and terminal burr in the manufacturing process, this paper proposes a 3D visual inspection system based on a stereo vision with single camera. It is technically noted that the base line of this single camera stereo was precisely calibrated by the image processing procedure. Also to extraction of the measuring point coordinates for computing disparity, the error is reduced with original algorithm. Comparing its performance with that of human inspection using industrial microscope, the proposed 3D inspection could be an alternative both in precision and in processing cost. Since the practical specification in 3D precision is less than 0.02 mm and the experimental performance was around the same, it was demonstrated by the proposed system that the soldering defect with terminal deformation and terminal burr in inspection, especially in 3D inspection, was decreased. In order to realize the inline inspection, this paper will suggest how the human inspection of the products could be modeled and be implemented by the computer system especially in manufacturing process.

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The authors have proposed a binocular robot vision system having an active viewpoint. By using this active viewpoint, the system constructs the correspondence between right and left images and calcurates the spatial coordinates of the object. In the present papser, an intelligent function for recognizing quadrangles in the image is incorporated into the system. Vy using Hough transform, the system detects lines in the right and left images and searches a region surrounded by 4straight lines, then recognizes the region as a quadrangle. A quadrange in the right image should have a counter part in the left image. The information of such correspondence between the quadrangles in the right and left images is used for the calculation of the spatial coordinagets of the object. The effect of the incorporated intelligent function on the performance of the robot vision system is shown experimentally by using a cuboid as an object.

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This paper proposes a simple and robust method for indoor self-localization. Infrared LEDs are used as landmarks and set at known position. They are identified blinking. A CCD camera on a mobile robot observes them and self-localization is carried out. Acquisition of the position and orientation of the robot with two or more LEDs is formulated. The nonlinear least squares method is applied. Experiments with a constructed experimental system evaluate the proposed method. For four parameters, observation of two LEDs gives a good localization, and for six parameters, four LEDs.

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We have been developing the Assistive MObile Robot System (AMOS), which helps a daily life of physically handicapped persons. The purpose of AMOS is to replace only simple tasks that to transport daily use objects in the indoor environment. In the system, if the operator chooses the object to be transported in the environment, then AMOS approaches to the objects, pick up it, and finally relocate it in the designed location. To allow the operator to choose the objects in the system easily, we have been developing vision based user interface which accepts the gesture of the operator as a command.

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The authors are developing an ultrasound-based integrated system for non-invasive diagnosis and treatment of renal stones. The major goals of the system are to aid to detect renal stones with ultrasound images and to eliminate them by cloud-cavitaion controlled lithotripsy using high intensity focused ultrasound. Follows are the motivations of this research. Stones which are smaller than 5 mm in diameter are difficult to detect in ultrasound diagnostic images with the naked eye. The target stones of lithotripsy move during the treatment by breathing. Therefore, object motion tracking is necessary to improve the accuracy of the treatment and reduce treatment time. This paper describes the feasibility study of real-time 3D servoing using two ultrasound diagnostic probes and a xyz stage.

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In orthognathic surgery, the framing of 3D-surgical planning that considers the balance between the front and back positions and the symmetry of the jawbone, as well as the dental occlusion of teeth, is essential. In this study, a support system for orthodontic surgery by visualizing the changes in the mandible and the occlusal condition have been developed. This system enables surgeons to determine the optimum position of a jawbone and teeth alignment at the same time. By integrating the manipulation of a tooth model and the 3D-CT skeletal images that are simultaneously displayed in real-time, the optimal determination of the mandibular position and posture is possible. The realistic operation of the entity model and the virtual 3D image display enabled the construction of a surgical simulation system that involves augmented reality.

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In this report, we propose a method to automate scoring for procedural answer type test. A procedural answer type test is better adapted to mark sense or computer based testing, but the method to automate scoring is not established yet. In the first report, we discussed a way to score answers automatically considering the penalty weight to wrong answers. But this method didn't consider the case where there are plural correct answers or the case where there are some unanswered items. In this report, we deal with action of earthquake as an example for procedural answer type skill test and examine way to automate scoring considering them. We confirmed the validity of this method through experiments.

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In this report, we describe the proportional relationship between the machining shape of straightness on workpiece and the input energy of each position on workpiece in wire electrical discharge machining (Wire-EDM). The discharge positions can be measured by comparing the peak of machining current ration from upper and lower power feeder, and the input energy can be calculated from the machining current at each discharge position. Though the shape of straightness on the workpiece changes into wire-EDM by the influence such as the wire vibrations, it is cleared that the shape of straightness will be estimated from the input energy.

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In wire EDM, it is necessary to control the wire orientation accurately. However, the control is difficult because of the complex behavior of the wire during cutting caused by bubble expansion, electrostatic force and electromagnetic force. Therefore, it is important to measure the reflection and vibration of the wire in-process and to estimate the machined surface shape. This paper describes the in-process measurement of the wire behavior using a sensor newly developed. The surface shape estimated from the wire behavior coincided well with the surface shape measured after machining.

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This paper describes FEM analysis of the electromagnetic force applied to the wire electrode in wire EDM. Movement of the wire electrode was observed using a high speed camera when a pulse current was supplied to the wire electrode. When the current was steady, the force was attractive toward the workpiece. On the other hand, when current was rising, the force was repulsive, while the force was attractive when the current started decreasing after a steady state. The force caused by unsteady current was greater than that caused by steady current in the case that copper, which has a paramagnetism and high electric conductivity, was used as workpiece material. In constant, influence of steady current was dominant, in the case that a ferromagnetic material such as steel was used.

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In order to develop a new coating wire electrode, the effect of surface shape and quality of wire electrode on wire EDM characteristics has been researched. In our previous report, the thickness and the chemical composition of coated brass were optimized for high-speed and high-precision machining. In this report, the influence of unevenness of brass wire electrode surface was experimentally investigated. In addition, electrostatic field in the gap between wire electrode and work-piece surface when open circuit voltage was applied was analyzed.

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[in Japanese]

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On the wire electrical discharge machining process of insulating ceramics, Si₃N₄ ceramics have the better machining properties than other material such as ZrO₂, SiC. It was well known that mechanical and physical properties of ceramics material varied with the sintering conditions and additive. EDM properties are changed with variation of material characteristics. To clarify the effects of the physical properties on the WEDM process, several Si₃N₄ ceramics were WEDMed by the assisting electrode method. The relation of thermal conductivity and removal rate, surface roughness was evaluated. The differences of machining properties for each material are discussed with waveforms analysis and electrically conducive layer thickness.

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