Not only in Japan but also in other countries, there are some case studies in the museum using virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. Based on this trend, Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. developed Toppan VR which a method to show digital archive data, and have organized the Museum Theater with Tokyo National Museum (Tohaku). This research designed a service on The Great Map of Japan (Inouzu) in order to expand the user experience in the museum as well as to solve some issues extracted through operational experiences. This service designed 4 touch points on Inouzu, an interactive map viewer, a VR movie "Map of Japan created by Ino Tadataka" at Museum Theater, a workshop on pace countings, Special exhibition "Map of Japan created by Ino Tadataka" at Heiseikan Thematic Exhibition Room, and aligned them. As a result of the evaluation tests, this service changed passive experiences on the Museum Theater to more subjective experiences, and achieved more effective linkage between the Museum Theater and the exhibition.

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Previous research, for instance, in the museum context has demonstrated that the interactive information media used is crucial. In this paper, we argue that humanlike appearance and humanlike conversational behaviors increase the effectiveness of information transfer. We developed the autonomous system of the female-type android robot to test this assumption in a field experiment situated in a shopping mall context. Concretely, in this scenario, the android not only provided objective information such as a price or where to buy goods, but also conveyed subjective information about her preferred shops in the mall. Overall, descriptive findings showed that the customers were eager to accept the android as a humanlike interaction partner: To illustrate, participants expressed interest in engaging with it and generally appreciated the conversation with this type of information media. To confirm the positive impact of the android on customer behaviors, we even observed that the clothes the android was wearing during the field trials happened to sell out while the experiment was running. The relevance of using androids as effective media in public spaces are discussed.

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We propose a real-time anisotropic BTF rendering and animation method of Noh-costume under dynamic lighting with bonfire flickering effect in the Takigi Noh lighting environment. In the Takigi Noh, Noh costumes of gold brocades shines and flickers beautifully and intricately with torches set around the Noh stage that provide the illumination. To represent the anisotropic reflectance of the Noh costume, first, we model the anisotropic reflectance of the Noh costume of gold brocades with the bidirectional texture function (BTF), which extended the Ashikhmin's bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) model. Then, we represent the bonfire flame by procedural texture as dynamic ambient map to perform the same calculation as direct calculation from environment map. Finally, using the generated pixelated light source, actor and stage model, and motion data, the rendering of the anisotropic reflectance of the Noh costume fabric under dynamic lighting is achieved.

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In this paper, we propose a new method to estimate spectral reflectance of glossy objects such as silk-like fabrics from high resolution multi-band HDR images. Specular reflection of fabrics is known to be body-colored and quite larger than diffuse reflection, which makes spectral reflectance estimation unstable. To overcome this problem, luminance of multi-band signal is normalized before estimating spectral reflectance estimation. Experimental results on glossy color charts and a satin fabric demonstrated superior performance over conventional methods. The proposed method was also effective regardless of the estimation methods such as PLS and Wiener estimation, multiple regression analysis.

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In this paper, we present the development of a three-dimensional sound-field simulator based on the boundary-surface control (BoSC) principle. The BoSC system consists of an 80-ch fullerene-shaped microphone array and an immersive sound reproduction system mounted with 96-ch loudspeakers, referred to as a 'Sound Cask'. Because the Sound Cask allows listeners to move their head, it provides high-performance sound localisation, thus high acoustic reality compared to the conventional sound reproduction system. As one useful application of the BoSC system, a sound-field simulator system is proposed, in which a musician can play a musical instrument inside the system to achieve the feeling of a concert-hall-like space. We introduce the system configurations and design methods, and perform experimental studies to confirm the applicability of the system.

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A new method to display information based on the afterimage using moving object is proposed. A laser light spot is projected on a fast moving object and draws pattern so that a human vision could recognize one larger pattern than the size of the object due to the afterimage in the region that the moving object wiped. The purpose of our study is to confirm the feasibility of the proposed method and to determine the fundamental characteristic of vision afterimage in particular with the proposed way of presentation. Preliminary experiment showed that the proposed method presented information to an observer successfully. Fundamental characteristics of visual perception of single scanned laser projection on a moving object were measured.

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This study revealed the relationship between evoked body sway and insensible opposite-current duration of Counter Current Stimulation (CCS) in Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS). GVS is expected to apply the walking navigation system and so on. Evoked sway has correlation with current strength however current strength and duration are limited by the safety guidelines that we established through the discussion with medical doctor. GVS current cannot give enough large sway within this guideline. Here, CCS may give the solution of this problem. In our previous study shows that CCS with long opposite current duration can enhance subjective acceleration sensation or virtual head motion evoked by GVS. Therefore, we thought that CCS also evokes large sway and opposite current duration will be affects this enhancement.

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