This paper reports the deployment of a tele-health monitoring system to be installed at an actual care house, which can monitor heart and breathing rates, and in/out of bed status of elderly residents over the Internet. Through a one-month operation, we could recognize several serious problems. This paper indicates these problems and suggests solutions to overcome them.

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.

In human-robot interaction, emotion expression of robot is one of the important issue for interacting with human more dynamically. In this paper, we consider two issues in view of real robot implementation. One is emotional intensity expression and the other is synchronized expression with behavior of robot. To express emotional intensity, we regulate tempo, pitch, and volume of base emotion sound which are controllable parameters by computer system of robot. We also suggest musical structure which has repeatable section to synchronize with robot's behavior.

In this paper, we propose a novel macro-micro tele-manipulation system based on body image embedding with contact feel, spatial motion and stereo vision for micro-manipulation under a microscope. The basic concept of body image embedding for macro-micro tele-manipulation has been already proposed by the authors. The system proposed here has three new realization ideas. The first idea is the realization of realistic contact feeling which is attained by driving a voice coil motor according to the binary on/off information of the switch between micro-tools. The use of a voice coil motor not only saves the cost of the system, but also generates clearer tactile and auditory stimuli than a piezo actuator for sending contact information in a micro world to an operator. The switch between micro-tools does not detect the contact between the object to be manipulated and the tool for manipulation directly, but can be useful for some tasks. The second idea is the realization of spatial motion of the manipulation tool relative to the object to be manipulated, which is realized by the appropriate coordination of the 2-degree-of-freedom motions of the slave manipulators. The third idea is the realization of stereo vision under the constraint of the position/orientation consistency of an operator's body image between proprioception and vision, which is achieved by the special placement of the dual joysticks of the dual micro-manipulators. The effectiveness of the proposed realization method is verified experimentally by micro-drawing tasks where we need appropriate hybrid position/force control of the micro-tool for manipulation in a three-dimensional space.

This paper proposes a method to improve the operability of micro-macro tele-operations in biological researches and developments. In such fields, there are lots of labor intensive works and the smooth execution of the works requires some trained human skills. Thus, if we can improve the operability of the equipments, the efficiency of the researches and developments will be improved remarkably. The idea is to add a pseudo haptic feedback and artificial responding sounds beside the real magnified image. The image itself has enough information to operate, but adding other sensory information may ease the operation. Naturally, the real magnified haptic feedback must be helpful, but its realization is not so easy. Even pseudo or artificial sensory feedback may help enough to improve the operability. As a start of our research, this paper shows a simple experiment to ensure the effectiveness of adding the other sensory feedback.

We argue the end-to-end measurement based admission control (EMBAC) in VoIP networks. We present a new probability-based EMBAC scheme and show that its performance is close to the ideal method using virtual trunk-based admission control. We then present a QoS allocation approach and the highest load link-based method for selecting an admission threshold and dimensioning link capacities. It is shown that the QoS allocation approach guarantees the end-to-end target in terms of blocking probability and average packet loss rate and the highest load link-based method is cost-effective.

In this paper, we propose a non-invasive and nonrestrictive human vital-signs sensory system using an electrically-conductive fiber. To maintain health, it is important to monitor our physical condition daily. Even during sleep, a person's condition is not constant and sometimes it can change suddenly. Therefore, we are developing a human vital-signs sensory system for monitoring purposes. Our proposed system consists of a sensing part, data collection part and signal processing part. The sensing part is composed of electrically-conductive fibers incorporated in a conventional bed sheet. Since the sensors are arranged in a grid structure, we can detect the pressure distribution on the sheet. We utilize this sheet to acquire human vital signs such as respiration and heart rate continuously. With a preliminary prototype, we show the basic properties of the proposed sensory system.

Businesses operate today in an increasingly dynamic environment through a worldwide network of information exchanges and business transactions. The Semantic Web - an extension of the current Web - which comprises ontologies and XML-related technologies, provides a shared and standardized vocabulary that can be communicated among automatic and human agents to share information and knowledge. Consider that an electronic business is a set of business processes governed by business rules that run over the Internet. These business rules play a significant role in determining the success or failure of a business as a whole. The goal of this paper is to introduce a framework that is designed to build business systems faster and which can more easily accommodate changes within a business. The advantages of this framework arise from its unity and simplicity, and especially its ability to effectively change, add, and/or delete business rules.

This paper introduces an alternative methodology, Lyee methodology, which provides a unified and deterministic framework to enhance the efficiency of software development and simplifies system maintenance and integration. This framework also simplifies the complexity of the software structure and provides a structure for users or customers to express their intentions or knowledge directly in the software. Due to the simplicity of the Lyee software structure and development, the majority of Lyee developers need not possess any programming experience.

This study deals with group robots forming a mechanical structure. In this paper, we address the concrete motion mechanisms of the robots. Each robot has a cubic shape with pneumatic actuators. It rotates with a corner of the robot as an axis. To realize the movement, we propose two kinds of mechanical devices. One is a stabilization mechanism that the pneumatic actuator stably forms an arched shape. The other one is a rotary selective valve for minimizing pneumatic elements. This paper also reports a demonstration of the pneumatic robots in hardware.

The shape Jacobian, which is the counterpart of the manipulator Jacobian, plays a key role to control the shape of a manipulator with extraordinarily many degrees of freedom. In this paper, we show some significant properties of the shape Jacobian, the structure, boundedness, determinant and singularity, in geometric aspects.

The kinematic structure of a manipulator with hyper degrees of freedom is discussed from a theoretical viewpoint. Conditions for the kinematic structure are derived from a geometrically natural requirement that its direct kinematics tends to Frenet-Serret formula as its number of degrees of freedom increases. It is shown that the manipulator has to have two-degree-of-freedom joints, each of which consists of a twist and a one-directional bend.

In this paper, we give a definition of a shape correspondence between a manipulator with hyper degrees of freedom and a spatial curve. The shape correspondence is defined by using the solution of a nonlinear optimization problem, termed the shape inverse problem. We also provide results on the existence and a well-posed region of the solution.

In this paper, a shape tracking control problem for a hyper degrees of freedom manipulator is discussed. The objective of shape tracking is to control its shape, which is characterized by all the joints and the tip positions, to follow a given time-varying curve. Crucial key to solve this problem is to introduce a 2nd-order estimator that infers the curve parameters corresponding to the target positions of the joints and the tip on the curve. The coupled dynamics of the manipulator and this estimator has the same properties as the manipulator dynamics which is useful for control design purposes. Therefore, familiar design methods for manipulator trading can be utilized to solve the shape tracking problem. Examples are shown to illustrate how to find shape tracking laws by two famous methods, that is, the ID (inverse dynamics)-based and Lyapunov-based method.

In this paper, a new shape control law is proposed to bring a serial rigid link manipulator with hyper degrees of freedom into a specified shape. Shape control is one of the most characteristic controls for a hyper degrees of freedom manipulator. This control law is derived by the Lyapunov design method. A homogeneously decentralized control scheme is also proposed for practical application of the control law to a hyper degrees of freedom manipulator, and it is shown that the derived control law can be realized in a homogeneously decentralized control scheme. The effectiveness of this control law is verified by a hardware model experiment.

This paper shows a control law to let hyper redundant manipulators be in specified shapes. Such shape controls are necessary for whole arm manipulation, crevice penetrations and obstacle avoidance. The proposed control is complete local-wise law. Each controller can determine its joint motion by itself while every controller has the same hardware and common control rule with the same parameters. Thus, the set of these distributed local controllers are just as a swarm intelligence. This type of manipulators are easily implemented, easily expandable and robust against partial damages.

A merit of hexapod walking robots is robustness to recover irregular situations. For example, even if one of the six legs is broken down, the hexapod machine may keep the walking. In this article, we propose a new gait rule named adaptive wave gait. The gait rule corresponds to not only the six legged walking, but also the five legged walking. Meanwhile, we also propose a synchronized motion control which is very important factor for the multiple legged walking. By combining the adaptive wave gait and the synchronized motion control, the gait generation and gait transition can be executed smoothly, and they realize natural walking of hexapod robots.>

This paper describes a new force control method for a hexapod walking robot developed for the purpose of transportation in rough terrain. In unstructured terrain such as soil and gravel, walking robots require the force control to keep its stability. Normally, soft surfaces such as soil has hysteresis characteristics. Thus, general force control, which sometimes shows overshoots is not desired. On this point of view, our new force control uses torque observer and avoids overshoot by a simple strategy. And, we also employed a notion of autonomous distributed control. The distributed controllers placed on each leg decide their own manner with referring information from central controller. We also confirmed the validity of our method by several kinds of numerical simulation.>

This paper discusses dynamical motion control for a quadruped walking machine. A quadruped walking machine requires dynamical control to keep its stability in high speed walking. The authors make the dynamical compensator by using a weight oscillator built in the center of the body. First, the authors calculate the exact oscillator motion that can neutralize the moment, completely. Next, they try to use a harmonic oscillation for the oscillator's motion instead of the accurate motion. Finally, the authors use a notion of autonomous distributed control for motion control and expand it to quasi-dynamical walking.>

Quadruped walking animals have both a static walking manner and a dynamic walking manner. The static walking can keep their stability structurally, but it only appears in slow speed walking. In high speed walking, the dynamic manner is required. Thus, animals change their gaits to be suited for their walking speed. In this paper, the authors propose a new method for transferring the gaits by autonomous distributed control. This control system includes one central rhythm generator and four distributed controllers. The distributed controller receives a phase signal which is a kind of rhythm clock from the central rhythm generator.

This paper describes a synchroniz- ing control for a hexapod walking robot named Hexax-I, which is developed for purpose of trans- portation in unstructured environnient. Hexapod robots are practical machine for such purpose, but they include several unsolved technical problems. While problems of power and mechanisms are ma- jor to be solved, control problems are also serious problenis. One of big control problem is the strat- egy how to syncliroiiise the six legs. 'Open loop control' is a simple approach, but it is not robust against disturbances by ground, thus it disables the good property,'flexible walking'. This paper proposes a simple control strategy to realize syn- chronized motion of six legs.

This paper proposes a con- trol law for a hyper redundant manipulator which has huge number of links. and moves in 3-dimensional gravity free space. Each controller can independently determine the way how to move each link. The necessary information for the controller is only on the target position, the po- sition of the end-effector and the position of the link. Each controller has the same control law and requires common information on the target position and the end-effector position. Thus we can call it distributed autonomous. The proposed control architecture has two other advantages: robustness and obstacle avoid- ance. The robustness means a property that: even if several number of links are out of order, the total sy5 tern still works normally. And the obstacle avoidance is a property: if the obstacle satisfles some conditions, the robotic manipulator avoids it automatically with- out adding any supplemental control.

This paper describes a hexapod walking robot named Hexax-I, which was developed for transportation in unstructured environments. In general, walking robots have poor energy efficiency due to their walking mechanisms. The authors propose a power system which consists of a gasoline engine and computer-controlled electromagnetic clutches and brakes. Gasoline engines have an excellent weight-to-power ratio in comparison with DC-motors. The authors propose a method of circular walking using the interaction between the steering and the propulsion. The driving systems of the propulsion and of the steering are shared. The robot is therefore lightweight because the steering actuators are left out, and so a high power-to-weight ratio is achieved. A simple control method for steering the legs by utilizing this special structure is also proposed.>

Describes a distributed autonomous control for an ultra-multi plane manipulator. Each controller independently determines the way how to move each link. The necessary information for the controller is the target position, the position of the end-effector and the position of the link. Each controller has the same control law and common information on the target position and the end-effector position. Thus, the authors call it 'distributed autonomous'. The proposed control architecture has two main advantages: (1) robustness, even if several number of links are out of order, the total system will still work normally; and (2) obstacle avoidance, if the obstacle satisfies some conditions, the robotic manipulator will avoid it automatically.>