Horse riding is applied as a empirical therapy for both of physical and mental disease. The aim of this study is to realize the artificial horse riding therapy system that can include this unique exhaustiveness. For this purpose, the artificial horse should have the similar appearance and motion. As a feasible technology to realize such type of robot, Japanese traditional mimetic technology, Karakuri, is applied, to enable cheap and fast development. Also the method to give the choreography to the Karakuri horse is developed. Another aspect of the exhaustiveness is the VR content displayed to the user. Pursuing the content that can give a good effect in both of the mental and physical aspect, the visioninduced program is proposed and investigated using the electrical measurement of muscular load and the result suggest the effectiveness of this idea. The sense of balance is also measured using the stability of muscle activity, proving the improvement by the training using this karakuri-horse system.

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We provided a baby doll as a virtual baby for severe dementia patients during therapeutic program and after dinner. During therapeutic program, the occupational therapist (OTR) delivered two soft plastic dolls and one silicone doll, complete with dress and shawl. The activities of patients are observed by OTR and the activities are classified into four categories (no reaction, glance, take care of baby doll, communication with residents) and total counts were evaluated at the period of program. Most of patients tried to take care of dolls and they looked much happier and less agitated for intervention of dolls. Although the doll therapy would not be for everybody, it is useful tool for occupational therapy.

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The power-assisted walk trainer has been developed. To encourage training for the elderly, a virtual environment in the landscape with computer graphic character was applied to produce a real environment. Thus, the subject trains as if he/she walked outside. During and after training, impression of virtual environment was collected by the questionnaires. The subject replied the virtual system was not effective in training because too simple landscape. While the trainer included both physio-therapist and occupational therapist replied the system was effective. Although image should be familiar to the subject, the image of the virtual environment gives higher motivation for the walk training.

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There are still some problems regarding the recognition ability ofa speakerindependent speech recognition system. However, by using it as an interface between humans, they are able to understand the meaning of sentences, even with incorrect words. In this study, we have investigated how the understanding of sentences changes by adding nonverbal information, including a speaker's face, gestures and lip movements. In the experiment, we displayed letters consisting of incomplete sentences produced from a speech recognition system, together with a speaker's face, to subjects using a see-through HMD. Our results suggest that a hearing aid system which uses automatic speech recognition combined with a see-through HMD improves comprehension.

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We have developed eye-gaze AAC system for the people with severe physical disabilities (e.g. progressive muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, etc.). We categorize eye movement in three conditions (moving, before (or nearly) gazing, gazing) and in this report we discuss about new algorithm to compute gazing character in gazing condition. This system virtually expands gazing area wider only when eye movement is computed as gazing condition. The user can gaze easily desired characters without mistake. As this algorithm does not need high resolution to compute accurately, eye gaze system will become non-expensive one.

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We have been developing a network based care supporting system called the Hyper Hospital. The Hyper Hospital is constructed on the computer and multi-media based network whose major humanmachine-human interface is the virtual reality dedicated to the patients. As a part of the development, we have been developing a wearable computer which enables the care workers and the patients to operate various support devices connected to the network. For this purpose, hands-free operation of the wearable computer is important both for the care workers and patients to keep continuous physical care works while accessing to the computer. In this study, we proposed a method of the hands-free interface and carried out fundamental experiments of the hands-free interface to utilize the ocular potential generated by dipolar potential of eyeball..

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Horseback Riding Therapeutic Equipment that reproduces saddle movements on a horse has been developed to prevent lumbago along with the development of the driving method for obtaining muscle discharge while providing horse-like movements. Muscle power training on the abdomen and back is said to be effective for preventing lumbago. The researchers have studied the means of mechanizing this therapy from the viewpoint that horseback riding is effective for increasing muscle strength. This paper describes the mechanism, which faithfully reproduces horseback movement at a stationary position based on the data taken in a three-dimensional space, and its driving method together with the effect of increasing muscle strength.

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This paper describes practical use of a simulator of powered wheelchair. Three cases of very severely disabled persons are shown as examples. These results revealed that this simulator is efficacious on evaluation stage to find the best operation method for each person. Significant functions for it are virtual experience, easy settings of input devises and motion parameter, safety, dangerous experience, dynamic environment and similar driving to real wheelchair. VR technology to obtain reality like driving powered wheelchair needs particular characteristics. It is important for efficacious use of VR technology to understand what is reality.

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Alongside the aging of Japanese society, the number of aphasia patients is increasing significantly. However, the number of speech therapists and speech rehabilitation facilities lags far behind what is required. Another status quo is that such facilities are not succeeding in supporting all the patients in need of treatment, both because of the vast energy and time required for aphasia treatment, and the difficulty in having the patients come to such facilities, due to the patient's physical problems. In order to solve this issue, we have proposed and developed "Supporting System for Aphasia Rehabilitation at Home" to enable rehabilitation training of Aphasia at home. This system provides the means of connecting an aphasia patient's home at a remote place and a speech therapist at hospitals through the PC network, to enable the patient conduct the rehabilitation aided by speech therapists at home. In this paper, we will introduce the system, and report a summary of the system evaluation we achieved by actually applying the system between the hospital and the patient.

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A new touch sensor is presented. This can also detect finger bending. This sensor is mounted on the fingernail and measures changes of nail color for detecting a finger touch force and bending. So, this sensor can detect these finger states without obstructing the human's natural haptic senses. We make prototype fingernail sensors by using light emitting diode and phototransistor, and test the utility and limit of measurement. We intend to use this sensor in daily life. Therefore, sensors must not disturb us. At first we use simple setting, and get some data. It suggests, what composition is suitable to get enough performance and pleasantness.

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A locomotion interface using walking-in-place for virtual reality was developed. The estimated equivalent walking velocity by the developed algorithm reflected the stride length as well as the stride frequency. Because the estimation can be performed at every phase of the walking, it allows the velocity estimation without phase delay. The average estimated velocity well reflected the actual walking velocity in a treadmill experiment. The psychophysiological experiments also showed a good correlation between the average estimated velocity and the walking velocity in the same pace as the walking-in-place. The most natural velocity for the users was also examined by varying the proportional rate of the view-point moving velocity to the estimated velocity with PC-baesd VR system. The most favorable velocity was the estimated velocity. The physical load was about eighty percent of the treadmill walking. It was concluded that the developed system has a potentioal as a low-cost locomotion interface for VR.

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In this paper, we study the first step of the clarification of the haptic recognition mechanism, and propose a new virtual tracing device which is movable freely by our fingers and also has no attachment at the finger rest which we usually call "fairy chair". The device proposed here is made up of a mechanism movable freely by small force of our one finger, and the finger rest of the device uses a four-bar linkage mechanism that is movable vertically up and down being controlled by a DC servo motor. First we show the mechanism of our new virtual tracing device in detail, and explain the control system of the virtual shape generator and the mechanical impedance generator by using the block diagram. Next we show the experimental results of the device from the viewpoint of mechatronic engineering and human active recognition by haptic senses.

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In the case that tactile display devices with pins arrayed in a matrix, form are used for such applications as virtual reality and telemanipulation, it is natural to think that those devices are required to display the tactile flatness information of the virtual/remote object as smooth as possible. Spacing between pins (pin-pitch) is considered to be a major factor influencing this kind of performance. In this paper, we focus on the case of displaying a flat surface with a pin-arrayed device. A psychophysical experiment was employed to investigate how long pin-pitch could provide smoothness/roughness to the human fingertip. The estimated threshold from the experiment was 0.85[mm].

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In this paper we present a virtual reality mail (VR-mail) system to support asynchronous collaborations in virtual environments. In the asynchronous collaboration, efficient handing off of messages to participants in different places and time is crucial. We try to support this type of collaborations by combining speech and gesture in a message. The message is explained by a messenger avatar whose gesture and speech are recorded by a sender of the message in the virtual environment. A prototype VR-mail system has been developed and tested in the CAVE・. User tests showed that interactive nature of the VR-mail could help understanding of the receiver of the VR-mail.

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