Recently, techniques for measuring and modeling of human body are taking attention, because human models are useful for ergonomic design in manufacturing. We aim to measure accurate shape of human foot that will be useful for the design of shoes. For such purpose, shape measurement of foot in motion is obviously important, because foot shape in the shoe is deformed while walking or running. In this paper, we propose a method to measure anatomical cross-sections of foot while walking. No one had ever measured dynamic shape of anatomical cross-sections, though they are very basic and popular in the field of biomechanics. Our proposed method is based on multi-view stereo method. The target cross-sections are painted in individual colors (red, green, yellow and blue), and the proposed method utilizes the characteristic of target shape in the camera captured images. Several nonlinear conditions are introduced in the process to find the consistent correspondence in all images. Our desired accuracy is less than 1mm error, which is similar to the existing 3D scanners for static foot measurement. In our experiments, the proposed method achieved the desired accuracy.

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This paper discusses nonconservative design of a gain-scheduled controller for a crane, whose dynamics has nonlinear dependence on uncertain parameters. In particular, the design problem is formulated into a robust semidefinite programming problem and is solved through a sum-of-squares approach. Since the sum-of-squares approach is asymptotically exact, a nonconservative design is possible. Although this approach has a theoretical drawback that computational complexity grows up as the conservatism is reduced, it works practically well to the present problem. The efficacy of the designed controller is shown by simulation and also by a laboratory experiment.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the effects of timing control of utterance and body motion in human-robot interaction. Our previous study has already revealed the correlation of timing of utterance and body motion in human-human communication. Here we proposed a timing control model based on our previous research and estimated its influence to realize human-like communication using a questionnaire method. The results showed that the difference of effectiveness between the communication with the timing control model and that without it was observed. In addition, elderly people evaluated the communication with timing control much higher than younger people. These results show not only the importance of timing control of utterance and body motion in human communication but also its effectiveness for realizing human-like human-robot interaction.

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This paper proposes a marker-less motion measurement and analysis system for infants. This system calculates eight types of evaluation indices related to the movement of an infant such as “amount of body motion” and “activity of body” from binary images that are extracted from video images using the background difference and frame difference. Thus, medical doctors can intuitively understand the movements of infants without long-term observations, and this may be helpful in supporting their diagnoses and detecting disabilities and diseases in the early stages. The distinctive feature of this system is that the movements of infants can be measured without using any markers for motion capture and thus it is expected that the natural and inherent tendencies of infants can be analyzed and evaluated.
In this paper, the evaluation indices and features of movements between full-term infants (FTIs) and low birth weight infants (LBWIs) are compared using the developed prototype. We found that the amount of body motion and symmetry of upper and lower body movements of LBWIs became lower than those of FTIs. The difference between the movements of FTIs and LBWIs can be evaluated using the proposed system.

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In the hot strip mill, the quality of the strip greatly depends on the cooling process between the last stand in the finishing mill and the coilers. Therefore, it is important to carefully control the temperature in the cooling process to regulate the quality of the steel. To realize high temperature accuracy, a new control system for run-out table cooling has been developed. The features of the new control system are as follows: (i) Newly developed feedback control using no vernier banks, which is constructed by using the dynamic control function. (ii) Newly developed dynamic control of cooling pattern, which achieves aimed cooling process during acceleration/deceleration of the strip on the run-out table. This system has been in operation successfully since July 2004 at Kashima Steel Works and improved the accuracy of coiling temperature considerably.

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