In order to make a machine part using a manual machine tool, special skills for its operation are necessary. Virtual reality technology is well known to provide novice operators with safe and high cost performance training environment. If you would take advantage of the property that virtual reality can simulate even unrealistic situation, you might develop some high efficiency training environment of the skill. This paper deals with a high efficiency training of boring skill with a manual lathe and a slender cutting tool, in which novice operators easily break down the cutting tool because of its low stiffness. In this research, first, a hypothesis has been introduced; if a stiff cutting tool is given in the beginning of the training and its stiffness is made lowered gradually, the novice operators gain the skill easily. Then, the hypothesis has been verified through trial tasks by novice operators. In conclusion, the proposed training method can reduce the amount of trial tasks and fatigue of operators.

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Manipulation model, particularly vertical motion of a group of individual bodies (GIB) such as a mass of rice is proposed in this paper. In this model, we can make up and down motion of GIB by using a container interactively. GIB is treated as one object near container, which means that calculation is done efficiently on one object. Representation of GIB based on existence probability improves the visualization of GIB's movement realism. One of the goals of this research is to use it for applications such as home VR cooking systems. Interactivity has a priority over correct movement of GIB in this model.

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We have performed a particle based simulation on deformation of the aorta valve and blood flow for medical education. The proposed method treats not only blood but also blood vessel and the aorta valve as a set of particles, and calculates the stress between particles with an uniform method. In addition, we have used Herschel-Bulkley model as constitutive equation of blood, and have simulated the blood flow according to the aorta valve deformation. One step simulation time including rendering was about 70ms for the deformation of the aorta valve with the model that is constructed with 4,300 particles for the aorta valve, blood vessel and blood itself.

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When making a precision machine part with a manual machine tool, knowledge of machining sequence and skill of handwheel manipulation are indispensable. Although many simulators using virtual environment have been developed for acquiring the knowledge and skill so far, there are few ones aiming to acquire both of them at the same time. In this paper, the authors aim to confirm effectiveness of manual milling machine simulator to allow the trainee to acquire both of them. The simulator is a mix reality system displaying a virtual tool and virtual workpiece on an actual machine by using ARToolKit. Trainees can get information about machining sequence and evaluation of handwheel manipulation in their operation with the simulator. To confirm the effectiveness of the simulator, subjects trained by the simulator are compared with subjects learning by a textbook. As the result of the experiment, the subjects trained with the simulator demonstrated shorter operation time and less mistakes than done with the textbook, the feed speed of the subjects trained by the simulator is closer ideal feed speed than that achieve by the textbook. In conclusion, the simulator can provide a trainee with effective environment for acquisition of knowledge of machining sequence and skill of handwheel manipulation.

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Theatrical play is the composite art which involves producers in different charge. In planning production phase, sharing the same image of theatrical space among the producers is not easy. To assist the multiple users' work in planning, this paper proposes a system that actually reproduces a theatrical stage through two spaces: one is a physical miniature stage presented on the tabletop interface, and the other is a virtual theatrical stage linked with the miniature stage which reflects actions on the miniature stage in real time. By reproducing the actual stage situation through the two spaces, users become easy to create and share a picture of the whole theatrical stage.

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This paper proposes a novel concept of light whose propagating speed is very slow so that human can perceive the propagation of light. We call it hyper slow light (HSL) and construct virtual reality (VR) systems in which participants can understand the concept through interaction with HSL. To represent HSL, we extend the model of spatio-temporal video to propagating spatio-temporal video in which each video frame is moving in the temporal dimension. We propose two HSL browsing models whose light sources are a projector and a physical scene, respectively. Based on the models, we propose three prototype browsing systems. Through a user test, we confirmed that all the participants could understand the concept of HSL well by experiencing the prototype systems. The participants found that a system which emitted recorded video as HSL from a projector was the most suitable for representing HSL, and perceived the existence of HSL the most strongly from it.

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The silhouette puzzle is a traditional and simple toy, and basically it is recognized as a personal play. We paid attention that it's aspect of intelligence, and past use is changed into the collaborative type. We propose "ContacTable": a novel edutainment exhibition. "ContacTable" is constructed with actual objects: a table, wooden puzzle-pieces, a ladder, and projected images to the interfaces. In thesis, the following examination was done to create the system. In this play, there are two matters of showing a question, the dominant one was clarified by the experiment on collaborative play by some examinations. The technology concerning system construction: the user interface, the image processing, and the detection accuracy concerning picture processing etc. is described based on the result. "ContacTable" have achieved practical management in the exhibition.

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Tracheal Intubation is a medical procedure in which a tube is placed into the trachea, through the mouth, to help breathing. Normally, intubation is facilitated by using a laryngoscope, and this skill is very important for an emergency practitioner to master. However, it is not easy to learn this skill because it is hard for learners to understand the way of manipulating the laryngoscope only with verbal and gestural instructions from an instructor while they train this procedure. To assist this learning process, we propose a new haptic display called Outer-Covering Haptic Display (OCHD) which covers learner's hand and applies haptic sensation to the outside of the learner's hand holding the laryngoscope. OCHD is controlled by the instructor using master-slave method so that the learner's hand movement is guided as if it is accompanied by the instructor's hand. Our preliminary experiment showed that the OCHD has a possibility to guide the learners hand with less drive force compared to the case that the laryngoscope is directly operated.

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In Japan, the need to support postgraduate physical assessment training for clinical nurses is increasing. Physical assessment training consists mainly of practical training, the evaluation standard for which is ambiguous. Therefore, distance learning for the training is very difficult. To resolve this problem, we developed a system that exerts trainer's pressure distribution on trainee's left hand as hatpic information, and projects the difference between pressures of the trainer and the trainee on trainee's right hand as visual information. This study aims to create an asynchronous distance learning environment for physical assessment.

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This paper discusses the support for better education using virtual reality system. The knowledge in the pedagogy and in the medicine are important for the development of VR education system, in term of the relation between the education and the cognitive, perceptional characteristics of human. However, there seems to the gap among many individual entities in this inter-disciplinary region. Motivated by this awareness of the gap, this paper surveys the medical and pedagogical knowledge at the level of the standard textbook, and tries to derive the suggestion for the development of the education system from this comprehensive discussion.

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This paper investigates the learning effects of the Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) using the view-sharing system that can blend the views from the first person perspective of the instructor and the learner. The usual way of learning the CPR procedures is watching the video of instructor's action recorded from the third person perspective and trying CPR. However, there are difficulties for learners in the third person perspective video to recognize where the trainer pays attention and what he/she checks. Therefore, we clarify how the first person perspective helps for learning of CPR. As a result, we found that learners wearing our view-sharing system make better performances than the conventional method and can easily recognize their mistakes of procedures. We discuss about effects of skill training using the first person perspective by the view-sharing system.

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We sometimes experience a positive feeling during playing sports/exercising without knowing the consequences of the motions. The feeling is called "Shikkuri", which is an onomatopoeia in Japanese which is considered an important feeling when learning motion skills. Some coaches already use this onomatopoeia in motion skill training. However it is not clear at all how and when the feeling arises. Our aim is to clarify the mechanism of the feeling and to exploit the feeling for teaching motion skills. As the first step toward our goal, we identify the factors related to perception of the Shikkuri feeling in the case of pitching.

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In recent years, most of traditional craftsmanship is declining because of aging skilled craftspeople and fewer successors. Therefore, methods for digital archiving of such traditional craftsmanship are needed. We have constructed a wearable skill handing down system focused on first-person visual and audio information and biological information of a craftsman. We used instrumental information associated with the usage of the tools for evaluating the effect of proposed wearable display system of intangible cultural heritage. In this paper, we show the result of archiving and training on the skills of Kamisuki, Japanese traditional papermaking.

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In this paper, the problem of the over-projection when we use the Bayer imaging for the drastic appearance control by the projector camera feedback is denoted and the mechanism of how it arise is explained. As a solution for this problem, a simple approach of anti-Bayer projection which restricts over-projection caused by Bayer imaging is proposed. The computational simulations and experimental results which employed Bayer camera show the effectiveness of anti-Bayer projection for the drastic appearance control by the projector camera feedback.

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This paper presents an advanced method which measures the real-time transmission delay time about all frames from video camera. This camera takes a picture of a timer display which steadily shows shutter-closing time of each frame. Additionally, two synchronous on-off markers have been built in that timer. These components, timer display and on-off markers run using frame synchronous timing of the camera. Two trial equipments succeed to measure the detailed characteristics of delay along the real-time SD-TV transmitted by the H.264 technology or by the DVTS technology with a resolution of 0.1ms. These experiments suggest that the synchronous on-off marker method is useful.

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In this report we evaluate a portable system that records scent environment under daily life conditions. The system consists of an array of gas sensors, a fan for air flow control, a power supply and associated electronics for the sensors and the logging system. The system records intensity of environmental gas vapors. An air fan was set at the rear side of the sensor array to provide with a constant air flow for stable and reproducible detection. We evaluate the possibility of classification by methods of PCA and clustering on a recorded dataset of 21 different feature points found in daily life. Although the classification results projected on the two principal components do not achieve identification of the feature points, clusters of feature points form that are characteristic of the feature point environmental conditions such as environments related to foods, outdoor, natural outdoor and indoor. Additionally with a view to reduce the system size and components, we estimate small combination of sensors by numerical investigation of variable selection in PCA.

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A new three-dimensional (3D) sound field reproduction system with parametric loudspeakers is introduced to present 3D sound field to a listener. The headphone-based systems have been utilized to achieve the 3D sound field for Mixed Reality (MR). The listener however has a sensation of pressure by equipping headphones, and the performance by the conventional system has been not enough to achieve the MR system. The proposed system utilizes parametric loudspeakers instead of headphones to solve these problems. In this paper, the principle of the proposed system named Acoustic Planetarium is explained. Objective and subjective evaluation were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system. The results suggested that the proposed method is superior to the conventional systems.

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