We present a pseudo food texture display that changes shape and hardness by using jamming, a physical process in which particles become rigid when density is increased. The jamming food texture display uses a balloon filled with coffee powder, and it changes the texture profiles by controlling the pressure inside the balloon (i.e., coffee powder density) with a vacuum pump. In our previous study, we conducted a subjective evaluation of the presentable hardness in a user study. In this paper, we conducted two experiments to evaluate the presentable hardness with a texture analyzer. First, we investigated the relationship between the hardness and the pressure inside the balloon. The results indicated that the hardness increased when the pressure decreased given their linear relationship. Second, we evaluated the pseudo food texture emulation of real food textures by setting the pressure on the basis of the model obtained from the first experiment. The results showed that the pseudo food texture hardness came close to the real food textures, particularly harder textures (gummy candy and cracker).

In this paper, we propose a novel technique to estimate stimulus onset time and attentional state from collective EEG with high accuracy by averaging the event-related potentials of a group. The accuracy of estimation was significantly higher when the number of EEG sensors was four, compared with only one. We used single-trial EEG signals from each subject and thus the real time engineering application can be realized such as grasping the attentional state of users in neuromarketing and the metaverse.

Cybersickness induced in virtual experience is an on-going problem that obstructs the greater spread of VR products. In this research, we propose a new method using blinking to mitigate cybersickness during viewpoint rotation. In the experiments assuming a shooting game and walking through a corridor in VR space, it was found that the proposed method was superior to the existing methods during walk-thorough in terms of reduction of cybersickness, presence, and performance.

In this study, we created a situation in which a mother and her child living in two remote areas can pass on home cooking skill by transmitting vibrations of cooking behaviors to each other using tactile transmission technology, in addition to video and sound. As a result, differences in the way they handled the foodstuffs were conveyed through the vibrations, which triggered communication between the two. In addition, the positive change in the mood of the child was observed after the experience, who lives alone under Covid-19’s behavioral restrictions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in remote work, sometimes leading to loneliness and mental-health issues. We hypothesized that emotion sharing, which occurs naturally in in-person meeting, is important for workplace members to feel connected even when they are remote. Therefore, we examined the effectiveness of emotion sharing remotely using embodied emotional expression logs for workplace teams. The results indicate that sharing emotion logs caused remote “emotional contagion” but did not necessarily improve mental health. They also suggest that emotion sharing may have a positive effect on those who view the entire team as “We” and a negative effect on those who do not. Consideration of the mood of the team and the members’ perceptions of their relationship with the team were found to be important.

A wheelchair simulator using an HMD and an electric wheelchair is proposed to solve the problem that conventional VR-based wheelchair simulators have a trade-off relationship between monetary cost and reality. However, this simulator is only able to reproduces a slope and does not reproduce a road with cross slope. In this study, we investigate whether this simulator can give the user the sensation of passing a road with cross slope by showing a first-person video of driving on a road with cross slope on the HMD and a circular motion of the electric wheelchair. In the experiment, we compare each condition with and without a video on the HMD and a circular motion of the electric wheelchair, and we verify the effect of using them. The experimental result showed that we confirmed that this simulator can give the user the sensation of passing a road with cross slope.

To feel more familiar with the agents, our previous research proposed an interaction style of agents that makes humorous statements in real time during conversa-tions with users, referring to manzai. Previous studies have confirmed the effectiveness of using agents for a single day. However user may become bored with the agents’ manzai-style joke responses, and their motivation to continue the conversation may decrease. In this paper, we newly introduced simple and nori tsukkomi to tsukkomi agent and conducted a one-week experiment. The results of the one-week experiment using the prototype system showed that the users found the interaction humorous, and their moti-vation to continue the conversation increased when the agents made humorous statements during conversations with the user. In addition, we confirmed that users’ familiarity with the boke agent was improved by conversing with agents for multiple days.

A novel virtual reality (VR) ride consisting of a head-mounted display (HMD) and an electric wheelchair was developed as an amusement park attraction. The VR ride was integrated with an electric wheeled ramp to amplify the perception of virtual ascent and descent. The ascending and descending motion on a slope was replicated continuously with varying curvatures. To explore how much the angle and curve radius of the virtual slope can be amplified from the physical by visual stimuli, we conducted two types of psychological experiments in which we analyzed the human sensitivity to the inclination and bending gains that describe the discrepancies between the paths in virtual and physical environments. The results revealed that the VR ride ascends and descends the virtual slope with a larger or smaller angle and curve radius than the physical ramp and establish corresponding detection thresholds.