Service robots need to be able to avoid pedestrians safely and reliably in environments where they coexist with pedestrians. However, it is difficult for robots to detect and avoid pedestrians from a safe distance because pedestrians at the end of a corridor or around a corner are in blind spots that the robot cannot detect with its external sensors. Therefore, this research proposes a robot navigation method that detects pedestrians in the robot's blind spot by receiving Bluetooth low energy (BLE) Beacon signals emitted by Bluetooth devices such as smartphones and wireless earphones that pedestrians generally have, and safely avoids them. By using the proposed method, our mobile robot can detect pedestrians that suddenly appear from a corner of a corridor earlier than when using a laser rangefinder, and avoid them safely in our preliminary experiment.

Acupoints can be identified as locations with lower impedance compared to the surrounding skin. However, since the measured impedance varies depending on the applied electrode force, it is necessary to keep the force constant, which is difficult for general users. To address this issue, this study proposes an impedance measurement method that compensates for variations in electrode force, allowing the measured impedance to be converted to an equivalent value under a constant force. Specifically, the relationship between electrode force and impedance is first experimentally determined to formulate a compensation equation. Then, using this equation, the measured impedance under varying forces is converted to the equivalent impedance under a constant force. By comparing the impedance values at multiple locations, the point with the lowest impedance is identified as the acupoint. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments are conducted using electrical circuits that simulate acupoints and non-acupoints. The method’s ability to correctly distinguish between these circuits by compensating for variations in applied force is evaluated. Finally, the validity of the proposed method is further examined through experiments on actual human skin. Even in actual measurements on human skin, it was possible to identify areas with relatively low impedance and estimate the locations of acupuncture points without maintaining a constant pressing force on the electrode.

The purpose of this study is to automatically generate gestures for an avatar robot based on the operator's words and emotions. One of the issues with conventional avatar robots is that "it is difficult to operate or select gestures while conversing. Therefore, this research aims to automatically generate gestures that match the operator’s emotion being estimated from operator's speech and acoustic information. In particular, this paper focuses on the word "I understand" and the accompanying gesture of nodding. The relationship between this gesture and the confidence level as perceived from the gesture — one aspect of the emotion "I understand" — will be clarified through conjoint analysis. Then, using the Semantic Differential (SD) method, we evaluate participants' impressions of the gesture and discuss what kinds of impressions are associated with gesture perceived as highly confident. Note that the gesture includes the movement of the robot's head and the color of the robot's eyes. From the results of the experiment, it was found that the more positively subjects perceived the nodding gesture indicating "I understand"—in terms of likability, sociability, and intellectual complexity—the greater the confidence they felt was conveyed by the gesture.

This paper proposes a lower limb rehabilitation robot for normal walking in post-stroke hemiplegic patients. Ergometers are commonly used for lower limb rehabilitation, but their use has depended on the experience of physiotherapists. Therefore, this paper proposes a new rehabilitation robot based on an ergometer that leads the patient to voluntary muscle activity and learns how to use the muscles required for normal walking. The paper first compares how pedestrians walk between a normal person and a hemiplegic patient using muscle synergy analysis to identify the lower limb usage required for normal gait. The paper then proposes a method to approach the use of the lower limb required for normal gait by changing the load depending on the position of the pedals when a hemiplegic patient uses the ergometer. This will enable stroke hemiplegic patients to train for normal gait by pedaling the ergometer. The above proposed method has been implemented in our prototype robot and the effectiveness of our proposed method has been confirmed in experiments with post-stroke hemiplegic patients as subjects.

This study proposes the hands-free crutch featuring the load-sensitive locking joint. Traditional crutches often hinder the user's natural gait and pose risks of nerve paralysis due to pressure on the hands and armpits. In addressing these issues, we propose the hands-free crutch equipped with passive joints to facilitate a more natural gait. This paper outlines the development of the load-sensitive locking joint, which enhances safety by complementing the passive joint. Furthermore, we assess the performance of the proposed crutch by measuring joint and knee angles and walking symmetry by the symmetry index.

Overhead work in many industries causes a heavy burden on the neck because the head is always facing upward, and fatigue tends to accumulate in the neck and shoulders. In order to solve this problem, this study proposes the development of a head looking up posture support device to reduce the burden on the neck during upper overhead work. In this paper, we propose the device together with experiments in which the designed device is attached to a subject and electromyograms are measured. The experimental results show that the device can reduce the burden on the neck.

The aim of this paper is to realize a robot that supports standing motion for elderly people with low care needs, using the person's residual physical strength to prevent further decline in their physical strength. To realize this objective, the two key ideas proposed in this paper are as follows. The first idea is to identify the multiple basic movements that make up the standing motion of the elderly through a muscle synergy analysis of the standing motion of the elderly. This makes it possible to design standing assistance procedures according to the physical condition of the elderly person, as the basic motions can be matched to the stability margin range, which varies from one elderly person to another. The second idea proposes standing assistance procedures that allow the voluntary standing motion of the elderly to demonstrate their remaining physical abilities in standing motions. Even if an elderly person performs a standing assistance procedure that differs from the designed standing assistance procedure, our standing assistance robot allows the posture of the elderly person if it is within the stability margin of the individual elderly person, and only gives force assistance to the elderly person if the posture is not within the stability margin. This leads to safety and voluntary movement during standing motion. The above proposed method was implemented in our standing assistance robot prototype, and through experiments with subjects, we confirmed that it brought out the subject's remaining physical strength in standing assistance procedures.

The purpose of this study is to develop an archery practice system that does not require a long range. The core of the system is the estimation of the arrow's trajectory. To estimate the arrow's trajectory, we need to know the position of the arrow's passage in a plane perpendicular to the arrow's direction of travel at two points in the trajectory, and the time required for the passage between these two points. In this paper, we propose a method for estimating the position of the arrow's passage on a plane perpendicular to the arrow's direction of travel. The proposed system consists of a pair of object detection sensors, consisting of infrared LEDs and phototransistors, arranged in array on the opposite sides of a rectangle flame with length 600mm and width 150mm. This one-dimensional array of optical sensors can estimate two-dimensional position information. This paper reports the results of basic experiments.

This study aims to develop the omnidirectional mobility system with a hands-free interface to support walking in cooperation with picking operations with Autonomous mobile robots: AMR in a small warehouse. Currently, AMRs are used to transport goods in small warehouses. However, because many of these AMRs do not capabilities of picking items from shelves, the workers must pick up, load, and unload them. Resulting in the workers must walk between the shelves and the AMRs, which takes a load of work. In this study, we develop the omnidirectional mobility for the workers to shorten the walking distance in small warehouses. The proposed mobility has a sitting stand support for the worker to sit or stand easily. The worker boards the mobility with sitting on the stand, and operates the mobility in a hands-free state. To estimate this operational intention, the mobility uses the worker’s body movement and the position of the center of mass on the boarding surface. This information is measured by using strain gauges and load cells installed at the bottom of the sitting stand support. This paper presents the configuration of the user interface and investigates the feasibility of estimating the operational intention via body movements.

This paper quantitatively analyses the effects of training with an ergometer by analyzing muscle synergies of muscle movements that appear in patients during gait function recovery training using an ergometer. By setting the load of the ergometer appropriately, the muscle synergies that appear when healthy participant train with the ergometer have a close similarity to the muscle synergies that appear during walking, suggesting that training with the ergometer is useful for the recovery of walking function. Furthermore, when stroke patients trained with the ergometer, the paralyzed leg did not show muscle synergies that were common to those during walking. This was therefore found to be due to the structure of the ergometer, which is operated using both legs, and the healthy leg compensating for the movement on the side of the paralyzed leg.

The overall goal of this research project is a study using RALL (Robot Assisted Language Learning) for Japanese students to improve pronunciation and prosody skills, and to provide more evidence of the effect of embodiment on RALL in English pronunciation and prosody. The subjects are divided into two groups: ten participants who use a robot (RALL) and ten participants who use a screen-based e-learning via computer (non-RALL). The robot had been used for the experiment was NAO from Aldebaran. The experiment took around 3 weeks for one participant to complete all the lessons including three pronunciation lessons and two prosody lessons. In order to assess the experiment, independent t-tests were performed regarding comparison of RALL and non-RALL scores difference. Dependent t-tests were performed to assess the performance of each group. The results shows that there was no significant effect of embodiment between RALL and non-RALL group. However, RALL system could improve Japanese students` English pronunciation, prosody, and overall pronunciation and prosody aspect better than non-RALL system.

The steerability of shopping cart varies with loading weight or position, affecting comfort and safety. The proposed active steering caster offers constant steerability of a cart. This caster consists of an electromagnetic clutch and a motor. The steering shaft is driven by the motor, and the transmission of that drive can be switched by the clutch. These casters are mounted at two diagonal points on the cart. By controlling the steering shaft of these casters according to the user's pushing force on the cart, constant steerability can be provided without being affected by the loading weight or position. In this paper, we propose the active steering caster with passive function and its arrangement on the cart with mixing the conventional casters.

This paper proposes a new estimation method for the lower limb muscle strength of the elderly that can be easily performed in nursing care facilities. Furthermore, based on the estimated lower limb muscle strength information, this paper proposes a human model that simulates the physical conditions of the elderly and, using this model, proposes a new design method for standing assistance strategy adapted to the physical conditions of the elderly. The main advantage of the proposed method is that it can estimate and model leg muscle strength, which depends on the individual elderly person, in a simple way that can be carried out by staff in nursing care facilities who are not engineering specialists, without the use of specialized measuring equipment such as electromyography.

In recent years, development of robots that can run independently in the same space as humans has been progressing. Most of the current navigation methods for autonomous robots use geometric information. While this method is easy to implement, it has some drawbacks, such as the need for accurate self-positioning and vulnerability to errors in sensor information. Humans do not have an exact self-position, but rather, they recognize an approximate location based on surrounding information and envision the path to the goal to reach the destination. Therefore, this study examines a navigation method that plans a route based on an abstract map, such as a hand-drawn map, and then travels independently to the destination.

In this paper, we propose an autonomous mobile robot navigation system that considers pedestrian flow in a crosswalk. In recent years, autonomous mobile robots have been required to be introduced into the real world. Such a robot is required to move efficiently, but more than that, it is required to avoid pedestrians and obstacles safely. On a normal sidewalk, if there is a risk of a collision with a pedestrian, the mobile robot can wait until this danger is gone. However, at crosswalks, there is a risk of collision with pedestrians due to multiple pedestrians coming and going, furthermore there is a time constraint of having to cross while the signal is green. Therefore, conventional mobile robot navigation methods cannot be used in this situation. On the other hand, the pedestrians move in the direction of each other in response to each other's movements, and this walking way enables a large number of people to pass through the crosswalk in a very short period of time, when the signal is green. Therefore, this study analyzes the movement of pedestrians passing through the crosswalk in a group, and investigates a mechanism for the generation of pedestrian flow on the crosswalk. Furthermore, we propose a mobile robot navigation method that can both avoid the risk of collisions with pedestrians and pass through crosswalks while the signal is green, using an algorithm to guide a mobile robot along the pedestrian flow that we investigated.

This study develops the robotic IV pole and proposed forward moving scheme aiming to reduce the risk of falling. The risk of falling caused by pushing conventional IV pole while walking can be reduced by having the IV pole autonomously move side by side with user (user does not touch IV pole.). The Robotic IV pole is composed of omni-wheel, Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR), Raspberry Pi, and Arduino Due. The proposed method that user's center of gravity can be obtained by LiDAR being attached to the lower center of the robot base of the IV pole, detects both feet of the user, and each center of gravity positions of both feet is estimated. Then, the user's center of gravity is estimated by using the estimated center of gravity positions of both feet. By controlling the robotic IV pole's motion so as that the estimated user's center of gravity and the position of IV pole be the same in forward direction, the robotic IV pole can autonomously move with the user. By conducting experiment, it is confirmed whether the proposed algorithm can automatically move side by side with user, and how range of walking speed is acceptable. As a result, the IV pole was able to automatically moves with the user at walking speed of about 0.3 m/s to 0.8 m/s.

In this paper, we describe the integrated system for ensuring the safety of forestry workers. It is difficult to accurately acquire GPS information in forests. Therefore, it is necessary to consider a position estimation method that does not use GPS. First, the accuracy of VisualSLAM, IMU, and Beacon alone was verified and evaluated by experiments. We also examined the communication method and self-position estimation system for the integrated system. The results show that the self-positioning of Visual SLAM and IMU requires a large interval for correction, which results in a large error. Therefore, we found that the larger the measurement interval, the larger the error of any sensor system. The future tasks are to improve the accuracy of sensor systems, to optimize the measurement interval, and to integrate the systems.

Human factors and ergonomics (HFE) research is an important field for improving safety and minimizing risks associated with product-use errors through avoidance of intended or unintended mistakes. For industry, standardization can make the dissimilar elements into systems easier, provides a path to user acceptance, reduces product costs, and opens more markets. For HFE, standardization will increase safety and minimize the risks caused by product use errors and improve productivity. This paper presents an overview of standards in modern HFE. It explains the origins of modern HFE, the use of standards in HFE, and the past and future of HFE related standardization.

This paper presents a cross-disciplinary view of industrial electronics for building a sustainable society. After explaining efforts and challenges from human factors, professional education, electronic systems on chip, technology ethics and society, and standards, we suggest a methodology for cross-disciplinary technology integrating the above-mentioned fields, in which the technical committees in Cluster 4, Industrial Electronics Society, play an active part.

The purpose of this research is to develop an omnidirectional low-floor mobility. The mobile platform and the interface have already been developed. The height of the mobile platform is 37 mm from ground to the boarding surface. Omnidirectional movement is realized by using four mecanum wheels. This mobility utilizes sway of the center of gravity of the users. In order to operate this mobility, the users voluntarily tilt their bodies. This body inclination is estimated from the load distribution information of eight load cells installed on the boarding surface of this mobility. This enables forward-backward, lateral, and turning movements. However, the motion of this mobility is oscillatory, because inertia of this mobility causes unintended human body movements, which are input to the interface. In this research, in order to solve this problem, the authors introduce not only an inverted pendulum model but also a human postural control model. In order to change the body inclination voluntarily to operate this mobility, it is indispensable for a human postural control model to be able to follow an arbitrary target inclination angle, not just an upright state. The authors have now achieved forward-backward movement. In this paper, the authors propose a control model for following target inclination angle in lateral direction. First, a control model for maintaining an upright posture is introduced. Next, the authors conduct a body postural maintenance experiment in lateral inclination. A model is identified as a control model for following target inclination angle based on the result of this experiment.

This research develops a walking promotion device. The device is worn by user’s forearm and leads to increase arm swing. The device’s motion principle is based on parametric excitation. The Authors manufactured the prototype named “linear motion device”, and evaluated amplification of arm swing in previous paper. The device could increase the arm swing by 10°. In this paper, the authors experimented whether the device can increase the stride and walking speed. First, the participants wore the device on the right forearm. Afterwards, the authors measured at left thigh angle for stride and gait cycle. Comparing two states of disable with enable, the stride and walking speed were not increased. Second, they wore the device on the both forearms. As a result, the stride was increased 0.13 m, and the walking speed was increased 0.20 m/s. Therefore, the effectiveness of this device in walking promotion was confirmed.

This research discusses a dialogue system for human-robot communication. In order to develop a dialogue system, we conducted prototypes, experiments, and evaluations for each of the following three elements, “voice recognition”, “sentence comprehension”, and “response sentence generation” that are performed when a human talks with another person. Each element could be activated even though it was in the prototype stage.

The purpose of this research is to develop an omni-directional low-floor mobility. The mobile platform and the interface of the mobility have already developed. The height of the mobile platform is 37 mm from road surface to the boarding floor. Omni-directional movement is realized by using four mecanum wheels. The operation interface is consisted of eight load cells. The operation for omni-directional movement is realized by using load distribution information obtained from eight load cells. However, movement of the mobility tends to oscillate due to unintended body movement caused by inertia of the platform. In order to solve this problem, this research proposes control method by introducing not only an inverted pendulum model but also a human postural control model. In this paper, we focus on forward backward movement. First, the estimation method of human body inclination using load distribution on the boarding surface is proposed. Next, a controller of the mobility is proposed by introducing the human postural control model, and is simulated. Finally, the effectiveness of the controller including the human postural control model is shown by comparing with the controller not including the human postural control model which is validated by preliminary simulation.

This research proposes the walking promotion device using arm swing induced by parametric excitation. Generally, the walking is promoted by amplification of arm swing. The proposed device is wearable on wrist such a watch. It consists of weight, link and motor. Moving the weight in the longitudinal direction of the forearm, it occurs parametric excitation. In order to design the link length and weight, the arm and device are modeled and simulated with their parameters. In the result, the weight of the device is set to 0.10kg, the link length of it is set to 0.02 m, and the target amplification angle is decided 1°. To perform a preliminary evaluation experiment, 2-links pendulum was made with following the simulation conditions. Comparing with the states of disabled and enabled the device, the shoulder angle increased 2.23° in average. In addition, an evaluation experiment with human arm was conducted. As the results, the device can increase the arm swing.

This paper proposes a novel assistive walker robot, which considers its user's gait. Previous researchers have been developed many assistive walker, and many of them have discussed on obstacles/step avoidance function, path following function and gravity negating gravitational force function. However, by opinions of nursing specialists, the walker is first required to realize safe walking function especially, which prevents falling down of its user. Therefore, it is important to maintain the body balance of its user and considering with the characteristics of its user, the walker should coordinate it according to the walking way of its user. For realizing this, our proposed walker measures the right and left foot gait of its user and estimates its user's body balance by calculating his/her position of center of gravity (COG). Proposed system does not require sensors which are installed on its user's body for practical usage. Using estimated body balance, our proposed walker controls assistance force vector for maintaining body balance stably. A prototype assistive walker, based on the proposed idea is fabricated to help patients walking safely according to their walking gait.

The following topics are dealt with: learning (artificial intelligence); medical signal processing; convolutional neural nets; feature extraction; mobile robots; human-robot interaction; neural nets; gait analysis; data analysis; optimisation.

This paper proposes a novel sitting assistance robot, which considers the posture tolerance of its user. The standing and sitting motion are different essentially because the standing is lifting motion against gravitational force and sitting is posture coordination to sitting position according to the gravity. Therefore, the robot should lead the patient’s posture within a stable range during sitting and the required performance is different from standing assistance. However, in previous studies, conventional assistive robots used the sitting motion which is “reverse” motion of standing. Furthermore, these robots helped patients by using a fixed motion reference pathway in spite of their original intention, and as the results, these robots failed to assist by confliction between their intended motion and reference path. Therefore, we propose a novel sitting assistance robot, which allows its user to move their body within a prescribed degree of posture tolerance during the process of moving from a standing to a sitting position. Our key findings cover two fundamental research topics. One is the investigation into posture tolerance during a sitting motion. The other topic is a novel assistance control algorithm that considers the investigated posture tolerance by combining position control and force control. A prototype assistive robot, based on the proposed idea was fabricated to help patients sitting down safely according to their original intention.

This paper proposes a novel standing assistance scheme that guides a subject to adopt a suitable posture using intended movements and voice messages. In much previous research, an assistive robot requires the patient to understand the standing reference beforehand and generally, the subject learns the standing motion used by the robot. However, for practical use, a patient should be able to use an assistive robot without special prior knowledge. Nursing specialists also guide their patients with an intended movement and a voice message. For example, when they incline a patient's upper body before lifting it up, they notify the patient of a motion start with simpler words and guide the patient's body with a special moving pattern. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a standing assistance scheme that guides the patient to stand in the intended way based on skills of these nursing specialists. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experiments with our prototype.

This paper proposes the ungrounded force display device using the grooved cam. Using the human illusion, the user can feel the force in one direction when they use it. It is mainly configured the cam and the slider. The slider follows the cam and moves translational movement. We created the prototype using the grooved cam and evaluated it. From the evaluation, it was confirmed that undesirable vibration should be decreased. Hence, the inflection points are added in the cam profile. We show how to create the different cam shape and verify the difference in feeling by changing the cam shape in the two experiments. First experiment is for finding the sub-optimal cam rotation speed in each cam. Second is to investigate the relationship between the cam shape and the force magnitude which the subject perceives. As the result, we confirm that the movement of the slider with rapidly velocity changes gives the clear force presentation to user while the slider shows the asymmetric acceleration motion.

The purpose of this research is to develop the electric assist wheelchair system for hemiplegic users. The proposed system is able to move in any direction by operating only one hand rim on one side. The hand rim can detect the user's operational intention by measuring contacting force and status of grasp and its style. The proposed system enables straight ahead, go back, gradual turn, pivot turn and stop based on the force being applied to the hand rim, whether the hand rim is grasped or not, and rotational speed of the hand rim. After the user operates the hand rim and releases it, the moving mode shifts to the deceleration mode. In the deceleration mode, the pseudo inertia deceleration is reproduced by motors. In this paper, we focus on the proposal of the system and the inertia deceleration by controlling motors, and verify how much it can reproduce in the outdoor environment.

This paper proposes the ungrounded force display using the grooved cam. Using the human illusion, the user can feel the force in the one direction when they use proposed device. It is mainly configured the cam and the slider. The slider follows the cam and moves translational movement. In this paper, we create the new prototype which solving the problems that emerged from the previous prototype. We evaluate the device using the two experiments. One is the subjective evaluation. Second one is the force presentation from the new prototype as the quantitative evaluation. We could solve problems of previous prototype by changing the cam type from plate to groove and blushless motor, and the new one produce the force more clearly than the previous prototype.

The conventional robot arms applied in various fields are demanded to have high force output, high accuracy, high efficiency. But they are seldom applied in human life, because of large weight, rigidity, hazards to people caused by collisions. Therefore the soft robotic arm that is stretchable, light weight, softness without possible of hazards, and high precision control is suitable to deploy in human life. Thus the purpose of this research is to develop the soft robotic arm by using antagonistic pneumatic driven system. In order to realize this concept, the joint activation mechanism is the key component. This study focuses on the angle control of the joint. In this paper, the robot arm made by polyethylene is proposed. Air bags made of polyethylene inside the joint achieve antagonistic driven states. Helical tube made of polyethylene is adhered joint outside for realizing rigidity. It is characterized that control rigidity is realized by controlling the pressure in the helical tube and joint angle is preciously controlled in two degree of freedom by controlling pressure in the air bags. Furthermore, the joint angle can be controlled by controlling the air pressures in the air bags using stretch sensor measuring joint angle. The experimental result confirmed that the driving concept of the joint was well functioned, and the joint angle control was realized by feedback control.

In this research, in order to clarify robot design elements with high affinity with people, we developed an evaluation system that enables users to evaluate impressions from a highly flexible perspective from augmented reality. Human investigated impression evaluation on robot and identified 5 factors which are the evaluation index.

The purpose of this research is to develop the wheelchair system for hemiplegic users. The proposed system is configured by the front wheel with active steering and hand rim for detecting user's driving force. The user's operational intention is distinguished by the sign and amplitude of force along the rotational axis of the hand rim. The steering angle of the front wheel is controlled by an actuator based on extracted intention from the hand rim. By proposed system, user can operate the wheelchair by using only single side hand rim. In particular, in this paper, we evaluate the designed hand rim by conducting some experiments.

Currently, various force display device are under development. There are two types of devices in terms of mounting method: grounded and ungrounded. The conventional grounded type force display device can accurately present the force by mounting on the desk or floor, but the movable range is limited. The ungrounded type device is wearable type, the user is burdened to some extent and there is a great restriction on force display. In order to solve this problem, the force display device that can be handled in the hand using a slider crank mechanism has been proposed. This device uses human sensory characteristics, and force can be presented by asymmetric acceleration motion. Since this device uses rotating bodies and crank mechanisms, there is room for improvement in terms of size and weight. Therefore, we adopted a cam to generate asymmetric acceleration motion for the improvement. By using cams, it is possible to reduce the number of devices and downsize them. In this paper, we propose the mechanism using cam and confirm the realization of left-right asymmetric acceleration motion for force display. In addition the performance of the force display was confirmed through both experiments: quantitative and subjective.

The purpose of this research is to develop the soft robotic arm by using a pneumatic system. To activate the arm, the joint is the key component. Therefore, this paper focuses on the structure of the joint and angle control. This joint has a helical tube outside to change the stiffness, and two pairs of air bags made of polyethylene inside for configuration antagonistic driven system. The features of the proposed joint are that: totally made with soft material, inflatable structure and can be change the stiffness of the joint by controlling the pressure in the helical tube. By controlling the air pressures in the air bags, the joint angle can be controlled. By the experimental result, it was confirmed that the driving concept of the joint was well functioned, and the joint angle control was also fairlv realized by open loop control.

The ultimate goal of this research is to develop the design guidelines for a mobile robot that allows people to easily recognize its movement direction in the scenes where a person and a robot pass each other. In general, the design of a robot coexisting with people often incorporates the human movement and the sensory characteristics in order to let the robot behave like a human. This study also adopts this methodology and take into account with the human behavioral characteristics so that a person can easily recognize the robot's moving direction. Therefore, in this study, we clarify the characteristics of human appearance and movement in the period immediately before passing each other in case of person to person. By adopting its characteristics, we propose the design guidelines of the mobile robot in the point of view of robot shape and movement. In this paper, we performed the experiments ((1) Which body parts of oncoming pedestrian are often gazed by the other pedestrian? (2) Phase difference of yaw angle of the shoulder and the loins, (3) Impression evaluation to derive the most human like shape) to determine robot shape. As a result, we are elucidated as follows. Results of (1): pedestrians are considered to determine their own avoidance direction by seeing the movement of the upper body of the oncoming pedestrian. (2) The rotation of loins shows phase lead to shoulder in case of angle of walking direction change is shallow, on the contrary the shoulder is phase lead to the loins. (3) The most human like shape is that the width of the upper part of the robot, the width of the middle part and the height of the middle part are intermediate, and the width of the lower part is slightly wide.

The purpose of this research is to develop the agricultural support system aimed at light labor and efficiency when doing agricultural work. The support system attempts to achieve the goal by proposing appropriate actions to humans from the state of agricultural land and the growing situation of the crops. To support agricultural work, this system transmits weather data, environmental data of agricultural land to the web server by sensors and scraping. This data is received with the created application. Following the value of the received data, the support system proposes the appropriate actions for the human. The proposed action decided from the four factors of temperature, humidity, illuminance, and soil moisture content, respectively. The experiment is the subject grow crops. In addition, confirm the significant difference between using the support system, not using it. After the experiment, analyze the questionnaire result by T-test to confirm the significant difference. From the results of the experiment, a significant difference in experiments confirmed by the t-test. Therefore, humans grow crops using proposed actions from support systems, It confirmed that light labor and efficiency realized. (183 Words).

This paper proposes a novel standing assistance scheme that guides a subject to adopt a suitable posture using intended movements. In much previous research, an assistive robot requires the patient to understand the standing reference beforehand and generally, the subject learns the standing motion used by the robot. However, for practical use, a patient should be able to use an assistive robot without special prior knowledge. Nursing specialists also guide their patients with an intended movement. For example, when they incline a patient's upper body before lifting it up, they guide the patient's body with a special moving pattern. Moving in this way is based on their experience and expertise and, in fact, the patient moves according to the motion intended by the nursing specialist. In this paper, we investigate what type of motion guides a patient, and we develop a standing assistance scheme that guides the patient to stand in the intended way. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experiments with our prototype.

In this paper, we considered the localization methods which recognizes landscape. In order to realize localization technique by recognizing landscape like a human, we recognize the landscape from objects arrangement in view. In this paper, we consider landscape recognition by SVM and segmentation method by deep learning. As results of object recognition by SVM and segmentation, the recognition rate was higher in the method by segmentation. In addition, from the experiment of localization by landscape recognition at multiple locations, we clarified the problem when applying this method to localization.

Recently, some spraying systems have been proposed that use a drone towing a liquid tube. However, towable tube length is limited due to the payload of a drone, and there is a possibility of liquid leakage from the tube or that the drone will fall. To solve these problems, this research proposes a liquid feeding system where the tube and cables are towed cooperatively by multiple drones. By using multiple drones, the length of the towable tube can be longer, and the working space can be enlarged. In addition, if the power cable is also towed together with the tube the amount of working time will be increased because a battery will not be necessary. In particular, in this paper, it verifies that it is possible to estimate the position of the drone by measuring the tensile force vector of the cooperative towed tube with the tensile force sensor attached to the other drone. In result, we showed that the position of the end points of the tube that was cooperatively towed by the drones can be estimated by using the tensile force sensor attached to the drone.

The saddle type human body movement interface uses not only translational movements but also a twisting movement for controlling a personal mobility. The saddle is mounted on a personal mobility through a universal joint having 3 axes, and follows human body movement. One axis following the body movement on forward/backward is used for making the control input (velocity) of a personal mobility. And two axes on translational right/left and twisting right/left are used for making the control input of angular velocity. For making these control inputs, appropriate plays on each axis should be considered, because play of an interface absorbs low precise and small human movement in order not to reflect these movement to a machine's movement for providing high usability. This paper, therefore, experimentally investigates typical ranges of play (software backlash) on the saddle type interface, and implements them into the control scheme for the personal mobility, and evaluate it.

In recent years, service robots have advanced toward having to the ability to move autonomously in an environment in which they co-exist with humans. Thus, the robots must engage in obstacle avoidance to arrive at their goal point. In our previous research, we developed the artificial potential based method that the robot to plans an effective path simulating pedestrian characteristics by gently changing its moving distance. The repulsive potential changes depend on the pedestrian's characteristics. Using our idea, the robot can plan a path without including unnecessary potential changes, according to the pedestrian's route estimation range. Thus, our idea realizes both an effective path and pedestrian avoidance. In this method, the characteristics of the pedestrian are constant. However, pedestrian's walking characteristics are different depending on the environment that pedestrian's walking direction is various in free space model like shopping mall, in contrast, they are determined along the route in corridor model like an office. Therefore, the pedestrian's characteristic model should be changed depend on environment. Because the number of the avoiding-path case is unlimited, we propose the pedestrian potential model is applicable for any environments in this study. In the proposed method, the robot determines the pedestrian's position and plans the avoiding-path, which is reflected in the pedestrian's repulsive potential spread. The value of spread is calculated and changes depending on the pedestrian's position in real-time. We confirmed the proposed method is efficient by comparing experiment with the previous method, where the spread potential constant. The proposed method's effectiveness was confirmed through experiment with the prototype robot.

This study proposes a pattern based standing assistance on a robotic walker with a standing and sitting assistance function. In our previous works, we have developed a standing assistance system. Our assistive system consists of a powered walker and a standing assistance manipulator, and is small enough to be used in a typical narrow room such as a bathroom. Our system focuses on domestic use for elderly people who need nursing in their day-to-day lives. Usually, the body conditions of elderly users are different individually and required standing assistance schemes are also different. However, it is difficult to design the suitable standing assistance scheme according to the symptom of elderly users individually at real time because of its cost. Therefore, the proposed walker has several standing assistance patterns which are designed for the user of the different symptom and selects the suitable one for its user. Our idea is practicality for implementation with low cost. The performance of our proposed system was verified through experiments using our prototype with elderly and handicapped subjects.

Recently, some spraying systems have been proposed that use a drone towing a liquid tube. However, towable tube length is limited due to the payload of a drone, and there is a possibility of liquid leakage from the tube or that the drone will fall. To solve these problems, this research proposes a liquid feeding system where the tube and cables are towed cooperatively by multiple drones. By using multiple drones, the length of the towable tube can be longer, and the working space can be enlarged. In addition, if the power cable is also towed together with the tube the amount of time the drone can be used will increase because a battery will not be necessary. In particular, this paper describes the movable range of the drones while considering tube tension.

This paper proposes a novel driving-assistance system for manual wheelchairs with consideration of both uphill and downhill conditions. On an inclined road, there is a high risk of a wheelchair moving in a direction that the user does not intend. In our previous works, the user has driven our assistive wheelchair in the usual manner. Our proposed system estimates its user's intentions and passively works to complement their intentional force by negating the wheel traction that is generated by the road's inclination using only the servo brakes on each wheel. Nevertheless, in some cases, our system fails to assist the driving motion of its user because the user drives the wheelchair in several ways that depend upon the environmental condition, for example, during uphill or downhill driving. The required assistance is not constant according to the situation, and it is difficult to assist with one wheel-control algorithm. Therefore, in this study, we first investigate the required assistance condition according to the driving situation by conducting a preliminary experiment with wheelchair users. Considering the results of this investigation, we then propose a novel user interface that intuitively shows the system information and a wheel-control algorithm that selects a suitable wheel controller according to the driving situation.

The purpose of this study is to propose the wheelchair system enabling hemiplegic users to steer the wheelchair by one hand drive. This system consists of two parts: extraction of user's control intention from the single hand rim and the front wheel system with active steering. In particular, this paper focuses on the feasibility verification of this system and to propose the front wheel system. For this verification, the rigid body dynamics simulation was conducted. The result showed that the orientation of the wheelchair could be changed by driving the single driving wheel and by steering the front wheel. The required steering torque for front wheel was derived to design the front wheel system. After that, the prototype was proposed. Then the basic experiment was conducted to verify the efficiency of the system. The result of the experiment showed that the orientation of the wheelchair could be changed by steering front wheel and by one hand drive.

In the recognition of an object situated in front of us, we firstly watch it and then try to touch it to feel the tactile and haptic sensation to be perceived by our hands. Various virtual reality and augmented reality systems have been introduced with the growing computational powers, however visual and auditory information related with a virtual object is mainly presented simultaneously to a user for enhancing the reality. If we consider the real situation of a user to try to recognize an object in the living environment, tactile and haptic information is assumed to be rather important for the better interaction with the object. In this study, we develop a hapto-tactile display that covers the movable range of a human arm in the tactual search for presenting tactile sensation of a virtual object. We design and construct a tactile pad to be fixed at the tip of a passively-driven haptic arm, and the tactile sensation and haptic force are simultaneously displayed to a user wearing the pad in the hand. The development of the hapto-tactile display for human tactile search will be described in this paper, together with an experiment to verify the validity of the system.

This paper proposes a method for detecting and tracking pedestrians, which is an important function for preventing the collision of autonomously moving mobile robots with a pedestrian. To observe the pedestrian, we use two types of laser range scanners: one scans a 2D plane (2D scanner) and the other scans a 3D space, such as a 3D scanner. We scan 3D space with a 2D scanner fixed on the turning mechanism, instead of a 3D scanner, because 3D scanners are more expensive than 2D scanners. The 3D space is divided into voxels to determine whether a pedestrian exists. This detection system is robust to occlusion because turning 3D scanner can detect a pedestrian based on the shape of the data points. However, the scanning span of the turning 3D scanner depends on the period of the turning mechanism; thus, we combine the detected pedestrian's position with the data scanned by the normal 2D scanner because it is possible for a 2D scanner to track objects moving in real time according to the positional transition of the data points. To investigate the efficiency of the proposed method for pedestrian detection, which is robust to occlusion and exhibits real-time tracking using reasonable scanning devices, we experiment with our prototype.

This paper considers the visual impression in a human robot interaction where a robot imitates the human motion obtained by Microsoft Kinect. In this interaction, a subject swings both arms up and down while Kinect measures the subject's motion and this motion is sent to the robot with a certain delay time. In the above situation, firstly, this paper quantitatively shows the perceptible delay time for a human when the robot motion is delayed with respect to own motion. Next, this paper investigates human impressions when he/she watches the robot motion being not synchronized to his/her motion. Last, the difference of the impressions to the delay and synchronic robot motion is statistically verified.

This paper proposes a novel driving-assistance system for manual wheelchairs with consideration of both uphill and downhill conditions. On an inclined road, there is a high risk of a wheelchair moving in a direction that the user does not intend. In our previous works, the user has driven our assistive wheelchair in the usual manner. Our proposed system estimates its user’s intentions and passively works to complement their intentional force by negating the wheel traction that is generated by the road’s inclination using only the servo brakes on each wheel. Nevertheless, in some cases, our system fails to assist the driving motion of its user because the user drives the wheelchair in several ways that depend upon the environmental condition, for example, during uphill or downhill driving. The required assistance is not constant according to the situation, and it is difficult to assist with one wheel-control algorithm. Therefore, in this study, we first investigate the required assistance condition according to the driving situation by conducting a preliminary experiment with wheelchair users. Considering the results of this investigation, we then propose a novel user interface that intuitively shows the system information and a wheel-control algorithm that selects a suitable wheel controller according to the driving situation.

The purpose of this research is to develop the combination mobile system composed of coaxial rotors and single driving wheel. A conventional combination mobile system causes increase of the number of actuators, because actuators are never shared by each mobile mechanisms, but are adopted for each mobile mechanism individually. However, the actuator in the proposed mobile system is shared by combined two mechanism. The proposed system minimizes an increase the number of actuators by dispensing with a steering motor in wheel mechanism. A counter torque generated by rotors changes the orientation of the body, and it becomes substitute of steering function in wheel mechanism. A counter torque, originally, is negative effect disturbing an orientation of a mobile system. However the proposed system actively uses this counter torque to realize steering function as wheel mechanism. By rotating the rotor, the counter torque is applied to the body. And then the orientation of the body is changed. By this manner, it is possible to control the orientation of the body. In particular, this paper discusses the feasibility of this mobile system and introduces the prototype with basic experimental results of ground travelling.

The preliminary announcement, for example, the turn-signal of the automobile, the track's announcement use turning or reversing and voice announcement of the train arrives at the platform are used in the various scenes in a daily life. These preliminary announcements are used to suppress the negative impression such as discomfort, aversion and surprise of the human. In this sturdy, we clarify the effective service robot's preliminary announcement that does not give discomfort and aversion to humans in the actual outdoor symbiotic environment. In this paper, we clarified the effective preliminary announcement of the service robot in a real outdoor symbiotic environment that is used three revolving lights on the top of our prototype robot. Furthermore, we investigated the effectiveness of preliminary announcement in the actual outdoor symbiotic environment.

In recent years, service robots have tended to have the ability to move autonomously in an environment in which they co-exist with humans. Thus, the robots must engage in obstacle avoidance and arrive at the goal point. The potential method is one of the path planning methods for obstacle avoidance. Because pedestrian is moving obstacle, he/she may go outside of artificial potential in a similar method suggested by a previous study. However, if the robot avoids collision too securely, robot's performance is limited so a trade-off problem arises between collision avoidance and robot's performance. A potential method requires a function that allows a robot to plan an effective path without collision with pedestrian by predicting a pedestrian's next position during robot operation. In this study, we develop a robot navigation method according to the characteristics of pedestrian flow. We spread a repulsive potential that adapts the pedestrian potential equation based on the route estimation model. In the proposed method, the repulsive potential changes depending on the position or the velocity of the pedestrian. The robot plans a path without including unnecessary potential, according to the pedestrian's route estimation range. Compared with the previous potential method, wherein the potential field is distributed equally around a pedestrian the same way as a static obstacle, the proposed method enables the robot to plan an effective path with pedestrian characteristics. The proposed method's effectiveness is demonstrated through experiments.

This paper proposes an automatic sitting posture coordination system for avoiding the risk of the pressure sore on a wheelchair. For avoiding this risk, it is important to maintain the suitable posture which reduces the pressure concentration and share stress between the buttock and a sitting surface on the wheelchair, and to depressurize them as the healthy person does during sitting on the wheelchair. For realizing these functions, this paper proposes an active seating support system which consists of a sitting surface lifting device and a backrest tension coordination device. Our system estimates the pressure concentration and share stress on the buttock and based on the estimated results, our system realizes the suitable sitting posture which minimizes them coordinating two devices. Furthermore, when the risk of the pressure sore increases, our system assists to depressurize the pressure concentration and share stress with this suitable sitting posture. Using our proposed active seating system, the patient can depressurize by a natural body motion as the healthy person automatically. The performance of our system is verified by experiments using our prototype.

The purpose of this paper is to derive the suggestion towards to the design guideline of Personal Mobility (PM) for giving a good visual impact for the pedestrian. For this purpose, first of all, pre-experiment has been done to briefly evaluate the impression to the whole body size of PM by using Semantic Differential method and factor analysis. From the results, it turned out that big PM is associated with heavy or high rigidity feeling, and then they had a negative impression. Next, conjoint analysis was done to find the answer to “Which component gives the strongest influences to the pedestrian's impression?” The results showed that pedestrian's impression to the PM is dominated by PM's height. The derived suggestions are as follows: “The height of PM should be low as much as possible” and “The body width should be wide (about 600mm), although the importance of it is low compared to the body height.”.

A physical activity estimation scheme is proposed for patients who use a robot for standing assistance. In general, conventional assistive robots do not require patients to use their own physical strength to stand, which leads to decreased strength of the elderly. Therefore, an assistive robot that maximally uses a patient's remaining physical strength is desired. The assistive robots can achieve this objective by estimating the physical activity of the patient when they stand. The activity estimation proposed here is primarily based on a human musculoskeletal model of a lower limb, which exhibits a biarticular muscle function. The patient generates a natural standing motion using the biarticular muscle function, and the proposed model enables the assistive robot to estimate the patient's physical activity, without using biosensors, such as electromyographs, which are normally stuck on patients. The proposed estimation is implemented with a prototype assistive robot that assists elderly patients to use their remaining physical strength based on the estimated results, thus testing the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper studies the difference between two scenes of a real time motion imitation by two persons: one scene is when the subject feels him/herself imitated and another scene is when the subject does not feel him/herself imitated. And this paper also considers that "Which body parts of the subject are frequently gazed by another person?". There has been researches focused on imitating human motion so far. Many of them discuss how to measure the human motion and to implement it on the artificial agents, namely their research interests is the method to imitate human motion from the viewpoint of the side imitating human motion. However, there are few researches discussing the imitation motion from the view point of the person being imitated. When human or robot imitates the human motion, the imitated motion is not the same as normative motion exactly, there invariably is errors between two motions. Nevertheless, the human feels that the motion of another person or robot is own imitation motion. This research, therefore, considers the definition of the imitation motion from the view point of the person being imitated. For this purpose, the experiment was conducted in the case of human - human interaction, in order to consider the features of the motion which the person being imitated feels as imitation motion. As a results, it turned out that the person tends to feel that motion of another was not imitation motion if a delay of the movement was increased. However, the amplitudes of the motion did not affect the impression of the person being imitated. And, the person being imitated tends to see the tip body part of another person when the person sees the own imitation motion.

For reducing the risk of pressure sore caused by long period sitting on a wheelchair, we have been developed a depressurization motion assistance system for a wheelchair user. Our developed system consists of a sitting surface lifting device and a backrest tension coordination device. Our system assists to realize the suitable posture of the seated patient with these two devices. In our previous works, we investigate an index of the pressure sore risk by analyzing unconscious body motions of a healthy person who sits long time. From these analysis results, subjects want to depressurize their buttock or back when their posture is not suitable and a pressure concentration to a specific position on their buttock or back continues the fixed period. These conditions seem to be an index of pressure sore risk and in this paper, we propose an automatic depressurization motion assistance scheme based on this index. Our proposed system assists a patient to move his body for distributing the pressure concentration on his buttock or back and leads the suitable sitting posture when these conditions are fulfilled. Using our proposed assistance system, the patient can depressurize by a natural body motion when he wants. The performance of our system is verified by experiments using our prototype.

This paper propose a driving assistance scheme for a powered wheelchair with a force feedback function of its joystick. Generally, a powered wheelchair moves in a human coexistence environment such as a pedestrian way and it is important to move on these environments without a feeling of oppression to other people around it. Therefore, we propose a concept of a dynamic personal space which is a region surrounding a person who can feel comfortable psychologically to other person with a moving wheelchair in the pedestrian flows. A dynamic personal space is defined considering with a relative velocity and acceleration between the powered wheelchair and the pedestrians around it. Using this concept, we develop a driving assistance system using a force feedback of its joystick, which enables the powered wheelchair to move in a human coexistence environment without a feeling of oppression on other people. In this paper, we investigate spatial relationship with a powered wheelchair experimentally and define a dynamic personal space using these results. For verifying its effectiveness, the performance of our system is verified by experiments using our prototype.

In recent years, the demand for service robots is increasing all over the world. Service robots have the purpose to assist living, such as medical treatment, transportation and security, and tend to have the function which move automatically in an environment. When operating such an autonomous mobile robot in a real world, the obstacle avoidance is the necessary technique to use a robot safely. A robot has to avoid static obstacles such as garden plants or signboards, and dynamic one such as pedestrians, and especially the robot has to act with caution to pedestrians. The purpose of this paper is analysis of human walking characteristics from the movement of a pedestrian, and from the experimental result, it turned out that the future movement of a pedestrian will be able to predict by movements of a few pedestrians.

This research proposes the motion design for the service robot to give the positive impression to the human. The impression to the robot affects the quality of the service being provided by the robot. Thus the positive impression may maintain or improve the quality of the service. This paper, therefore, considers the normative motion to give the positive impression to users, and implements the motion to the robot and evaluates it. In order to give the positive impression to the users, we assume that if the robot motion is close to the human motion, the users have positive impression. For verifying this assumption, this paper derives the normative motion being mimic the human motion. This normative motions is described on the phase plane. On the phase plane, we can derive the common motion among the subjects. This motion is implemented to the robot and evaluated. By the evaluation experiment, it was confirmed that the impression of the normative motion gives users positive impression.

This research proposes the motion design for the service robot to give the positive impression to the human. This paper, therefore, considers the normative motion being designed for service robot to mimic the human motion. The problems in case of finding out the normative motion from the human motion is how to specify one person's motion from different motions caused by individual physical characteristics. We have solved above mentioned problem by expressing humanmotion on the phase plaen. Individual motions on the phase plane were fitted to the one ellipse by using least-squares method. And we regarded this ellipse as the Normative motion. This ellipse trajectory integrates some motions even if different motions in time domain, and can absorb different motions cycle and amplitude caused by individual physical characteristics and peculiarities. This ellipse trajectory was expressed as the time series functions by inverse mapping from phase to time domain, and they were implemented to the service robot in the simulation to replay the normative motion. Finally, in order to discuss the human impression from replayed standard human motion, the evaluation experiment was conducted. From the experimental results, it was confirmed that the impression of the proposed normative motion gives us positive impression in our experimental condition.

This paper proposes the saddle type human body motion interface for personal mobility. The proposed interface uses not only conventional translational body motion but also twisting motion, and makes easy operation. The saddle is attached on the personal mobility by using the seat post with the universal joint at the floor of the personal mobility. The universal joint has three rotational joints where the potentiometers are attached on each. Hip motion makes these joints rotate. The potentiometers detect these rotations, and then this interface measures the hip translational and twisting motions. This saddle does not support whole user body weight, but it is sandwiched by legs and follows the hip motion. User keeps his/her standing position by strengths own legs. The saddle type interface doesn't need pre-setting for the operation, since this system doesn't require any sensors on the human body. By the basic experimental result, it turned out that proposed interface can operate personal mobility and has a potential for intuitive operation.

For reducing a risk of pressure sore caused by long period sitting on a wheelchair, a patient is required to depressurize buttocks by changing the posture suitably. Thus, we have been developed an automatic depressurization motion assistance system for a seated patient on a wheelchair. In our previous work, we developed a sitting surface coordination system which can lift or incline and assists a depressurization motion of a patient. However, in some cases, it is difficult to change his posture suitably for patients who do not have enough physical strength in their upper body using our proposed device. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel posture coordination assistance system for a wheelchair user. Our system consists of the adjustable sitting surface and novel proposed adjustable backrest. These two devices coordinate the sitting posture of the patient automatically. Our key ideas are two topics. One topic is mechanical design of the adjustable backrest for practical use. We realize small mechanism which enables easy implementation to a general wheelchair without special reconstruction. The other topic is a natural posture coordination scheme using the sitting surface and the backrest. We analyze buttocks depressurization operation by a nursing specialist and drive our proposed devices for realizing it. The performance of our system is verified by experiments using our prototype.

The purpose of this research is to develop the sight assistive walker using hand haptics information. In order to realize user's active environmental recognition, the proposed system has passive actuators instead of active actuators. This system is something like a cane, and it has a small mobile platform on its tip. The small platform is equipped with some wheels and generates brake forces. And the generated force is transmitted to the user's hand through the grip attached to the walker. The system configurations are as follows. The Laser range finder is used for environmental sensing. The powder brakes are used for generating passive brake forces. In order to let the mobile platform move both lateral and back-forward, the four omni-directional wheels are adopted. By generating passive brake force based on the distance to the obstacles in the moving direction of the system, user can recognize the environment based on the hand haptics information. In addition, user has to walk by him/herself, therefore the user's intention is indispensable. In particular, this paper shows the design concept, system configuration and outline of the prototype.

We propose a novel assistive wheelchair based on a concept of a passive robotics. Our proposed wheelchair consists of a frame, casters, wheels and servo brakes. Our wheelchair system estimates the trajectory its user wants to go using the characteristic of the rowing motion and realizes the estimated tracks by controlling a torque of the servo brake. Our system requires no actuators, and its mechanism is simple and low cost. There is no risk by malfunction of servomotors and patients can use it intuitively because they use our wheelchair passively with their own intentional force. Our key ideas are two topics. One is the development of novel passive-type assistive wheelchair which is suitable for a practical use. The other key topic is a novel driving assistance algorithm with estimation of the user's intention. For realizing this estimation, we use the minimum jerk trajectory model, which expresses a typical human movement. Our proposed system compares a beginning part of rowing motion by the user and this trajectory model, and estimates the whole rowing motion which will be performed. Using our proposed system, the user can drive our wheelchair with natural feeling. We test our proposed assistance system by the experiments with our prototype and verify its effectiveness.

The purpose of this research is to develop the sight assistive walker using hand haptic information. The feature of the system is user centered system. This system never gives information while user doesn't manipulate the system. Only when user walks and manipulates the system, the system give an environmental information. Therefore, this system needs user's active intention for moving. The main important tasks while walking such as environmental recognition, path planning and locomotion are made by the user. The system supports a user to create a mental map by only giving the environmental information. The system configurations are as follows. This system is something like a cane, and it has a small passive mobile platform on its tip. The LRF (Laser Range Finder) is used for environmental sensing. The powder brakes are used for generating passive brake forces. In order to let the mobile platform move both lateral and back-forward, the four omni-directional wheels are adopted. By generating brake force based on the distance to the obstacles in the moving direction, user can recognize the environment through the hand haptic information. In particular, this paper shows the design concept, system configuration and experimental results to verify the supporting function.

This paper considers that the framework of intuitive interface of personal motility is the combination of the Intention Extractor and Motion Designer, which are the natural extraction of user intention and the human-like system's motion respectively. This research proposed the motion design which makes mobility's motion to be human-like by focusing on the Motion Designer in this framework. For designing human like motion, we need a certain normative motion to the personal mobility. In order to derive the normative motion, we collected the human motion when human moves to lateral direction. The collected motion data was mapped to the phase plane to eliminate time components. On the phase plane, each subject's motion was almost same ellipse, although they have differences in time domain. Then we did ellipse fitting to get one ellipse as the normative motion. For implementing the normative motion, which was fitted ellipse, to the personal motility, the derived normative motion was converted to time function by using t as a parameter. By this manner, personal mobility moved based on the normative motion. In order to verify whether the normative motion is human like or not, the sensory evaluation experiment by Paired Preference Test was conducted. In this experiment, two motions were prepared. One was derived normative motion, the another was “machine motion” which is controlled by the constant speed control inputs. From the result of the test, it turned out that the proposed normative motion is human-like compared with the constant speed motion.

For reducing the risk of pressure sore caused by long period sitting on a wheelchair, we have developed a depressurization motion assistance system which is low cost and suitable for practical use. Our developing system consists of a seating cushion which the patient sits on and four air cells which can lift or incline the seating cushion. Each air cell is actuated by small air compressor, which can drive using batteries on the wheelchair respectively, and each compressor has a pressure sensor on its body. In this paper, we develop the depressurization assistance control scheme based on the pressure distribution estimation. For realizing the pressure distribution estimation during the depressurization motion, we analyze the hip depressurization operation by the nursing specialists and from analytical results, our system uses the center of pressure as an index value. Using the estimated results, our system controls the inclination of its seating cushion for increasing the depressurization performance. With our proposed system, the patient can depressurize on his sacral part without special operation. The performance of our system is verified by experiments using our prototype.

Since the structure and D.O.F. of human and machine are different, the motion of human and machine is essentially different. This study defines "Pseudo Human Motion" as approximated machine's motions referring to the standard human motion. If the pseudo human motion is realized, the operation of complex machine becomes easy, because the motion of complex machine becomes human-like motion. In order to realize pseudo human motion, we derive the standard human motion which is to be a model for the machine's motion. For this purpose, we measured the human motions of plural subjects by using motion capture system. The human motion is different in each subject about the motion time, therefore it is difficult to directly use measured human motion as a standard human motion. We adopts following solutions for this problem. The fundamental components of each subject are extracted from measured human motion data by using DFT(Discrete Fourier Transform). And the fundamental components are plotted on the phase plane. There are no big differences among the human motion of each subject on the phase plane. Thus we do ellipse fitting to the each subject motion on the phase plane, and we call it the standard human motion. This ellipse trajectory, which is standard human motion, can evaluate motions even if different motion in time domain, and can absorb different motion cycle and amplitude caused by individual physical characteristics and peculiarities.

In our current research, we have developed a novel navigation system for indoor service robots using pictographs. Pictographs are widely used in a general environment with human such as offices, stations and welfare care facilities. Using them as a landmark, our system does not require special markers in the navigation area of the robot. Our robot is only equipped with a low-cost camera and uses SURF (Speeded Up Robust Feature) algorithm for detecting pictographs. In this paper, we propose a novel robot navigation scheme using the result of pictograph detection. Our two key ideas are: One is the robot's position and its advance direction estimation scheme using the pictograph detection. The other topic is the navigation scheme using the pictograph equipped on the crossing point. Usually, the pictograph shows the direction to the destination such as an exit, a toilet and an information center. Therefore, the pictograph tends to be equipped in a fork in the load and our system uses its characteristic for the robot's navigation. Our system integrates the position estimation results by the pictograph detection and the results by odometry, and derives the path to the goal position of the robot. We verify the effectiveness of our scheme by experiment with our prototype.

This paper found out the standard human motion which is exemplar motion for letting robot's motion approximate to human motion, and evaluated the human impression to the robot motion. The problems in case of finding out the standard human motion is how to specify one motion from different motions caused by individual physical characteristics and peculiarities. We have solved above problem by following method. First, the fundamental component was extracted from individual time series motion data by using Desecrate Fourier Transform, in order to remove walking cycle and noises and to easily map a motion to the phase plane. Next, the extracted individual fundamental components were plotted on the phase plane. Afterwards, individual patterns on the phase plane were fitted to the one ellipse by using least-squares method. And we regarded this ellipse as the standard human motion. This ellipse trajectory integrates motions even if different motion in time domain, and can absorb different motion cycle and amplitude caused by individual physical characteristics and peculiarities. Last, this ellipse trajectory was expressed as the time series functions by inverse mapping from phase to time domain, and they were implemented to the robot to replay the standard human motion in the simulation. Finally, in order to discuss the human impression from replayed standard human motion, the evaluation experiment using Semantic Differential (SD) Method was conducted. From the experimental results, the proposed motion design can let the robot motion approximate to the human motion, because the standard human motion is the fundamental motion among individuals and gives positive impression to users.

In our current research, we have developed a novel standing assistance system for an elderly person. Our developing assistance system is designed compactly for family use. Our system is based on a robotic walker with novel manipulator mechanisms on its body with four parallel linkages. In this paper, we propose the assistance control scheme which can use a remaining physical strength of a patient. In general, a previous assistive device does not require the patient to use own physical strength and it causes the decreasing the physical strength of elderly people. Our key ideas are two topics. One is the real-time load estimation scheme using a human model with measuring information by our assistance system. Using this scheme, our system can change the assistance force based on the estimated results. The other is novel control scheme which consists of position and damping control. Our proposed scheme can change two control modes frequently and using this function, our assistance device can reduce a part of the load which the patient wants to reduce. This means the patient can choose two functions with our standing assistance device; (1) reducing the load for easy to stand up by own physical strength or (2) using the physical strength maximally during standing motion for a rehabilitation purpose.

The objective of this study is to develop the mechanism which assists the wheelchair user to climb a step. The wheelchair caster unit with an assistive mechanism is developed. This unit is easily replaced with the conventional wheelchair caster. The proposed caster unit has two functions to assist the step climbing. One is the assistive plates to enlarge the caster radius imaginarily. The other is a lock-function to yaw axis caster rotation, which realize easy climbing with oblique approach. Our first prototype shows good performance for above mentioned two functions, and can assists step climbing. However, the first prototype is heavy, because of the electromagnetic tooth clutch is used for the lock-function. Therefore this paper improve the lock-function of first prototype, and report the outline of the new prototype. The new lock-function was composed by the solenoid, the rack and pinion gear. By using the solenoid, the unit realizes weight and cost saving and low power consumption, and it is more practical design than first prototype.

In our current research, we are developing a robotic walker system with standing, walking and seating assistance function. Our developing system is based on a walker which is popular assistance device for aged person in normal daily life and realizes the standing and seating motion using the support pad which is actuated by the novel assistance manipulator mechanism with four parallel linkages. In this paper, we develop the control scheme which realizes the natural seating motion with fewer loads to the patient. For developing control scheme, we investigate the seating motion of aged people who requires to power support and typical seating motion by healthy young people. Comparing with two motions, we set the reference of seating motion with our system and we discuss the required assistance condition during seating motion. Our key ideas are two topics. One topic is analysis of condition which realizes the seating motion as young healthy people. The other topic is combination of force and position control. According to the patient's posture during seating motion, our control system select more appropriate control method from them. Using proposed control, our system reduces the patient's load and maintains his posture stably when it is necessary.

This research focuses on the electric wheelchair controlled by Human Body Motion Interface (HBMI). HBMI uses the body motion which is caused by the voluntary motion. From our previous research, it has been confirmed that HBMI, which uses the center of weight on the pressure sensor attached on the backrest, has the ability of an interface. However the problem has also remained. The velocities of each wheel have determined based on the error between initial and current position of center of weight. When user tries to stop the wheelchair, user has to rigorously return the center of weight to the initial position. Therefore, if a slight error remains, the wheelchair is not able to stop exactly. This paper estimates the stop intention from pressure distribution, and absorbs ambiguous human motion, and proposes the method to prevent miss operation of wheelchair caused by slight variation of the center of weight.

This paper proposes a method that a human and a swarm robot move cooperatively so as to maintain the swarm situation that the swarm robot surround the moving human. This paper is concerned with the control for maintaining the high stability of the swarm, and proposes a control algorithm for the robotic swarm in obstacle space. In this paper, the robotic swarm which includes whole robots is defined as a whole swarm. In addition, each robot with neighboring robots forms a local swarm that overlapped the other ones partially, so a robot can belong to some local swarms. The proposed algorithm for overcoming above problems is based on the center of gravity of the local swarm which attracts the robot of it, and is applied to the omni-directional mobile robots. It is confirmed that the effectiveness about maintaing the stability of the swarm through simulations using ODE (Open Dynamics Engine).

This research develops a machine’s interface which has features of universal design and offers an intuitive operation for complex tasks. We set the development of interface of electric wheelchair as a practical example, and proceed with this research. The joystick is the operation interface of general electric wheelchair. The user needs to operate it in accordance with machine’s operational procedure specifications. Therefore the joystick is convenience operation system for the system side rather than the user side We focus on the body motions which humans have, and try to realize a new type of interface which replaces conventional joystick. The body motions is time-series data which contains ambiguousness, the common motions are extracted from this data and inputted to the electric wheelchair interface. Then the body motions are able to control the electric wheelchair. In particular this paper describes the design of the prototype and results of basic experiments.

A previously developed new-concept electric cart was improved by installing a knob that allows the driver to continuously vary the pedal load between the strenuous and assisted modes. This paper explains how the pedal load is determined and a design method for the cart control system. First, the largest pedal load is determined from the standpoint of ergonomics, based on the rating of perceived exertion and the Karvonen formula. Then, a gain-scheduling cart control system is designed that guarantees the stability of the cart system for any pedal load in the allowed range, and a stability condition is derived using dynamic parallel distributed compensation. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the cart control system.