Distributed applications in web services have become increasingly complex in response to various user demands. Consequently, system administrators have difficulty understanding inter-process dependencies in distributed applications. When parts of the system are changed or augmented, they cannot identify the area of influence by the change, which might engender a more damaging outage than expected. Therefore, they must trace dependencies automatically among unknown processes. An earlier method discovered the dependency by detecting the transport connection using the Linux packet filter on the hosts at ends of the network connection. However, the extra delay to the application traffic increases because of the additional processing inherent in the packet processing in the Linux kernel. As described herein, we propose an architecture of monitoring network sockets, which are endpoints of TCP connections, to trace the dependency. As long as applications use the TCP protocol stack in the Linux kernel, the dependencies are discovered by our architecture. Therefore, monitoring processing only reads the connection information from network sockets. The processing is independent of the application communication. Therefore, the monitoring does not affect the network delay of the applications. Our experiments confirmed that our architecture reduced the delay overhead by 13-20 % and the resource load by 43.5 % compared to earlier reported methods.

Scale conversion telexistence is an extended concept of telexistence. It comprises avatars of different scales compared with the human scale. Immersive telexistence experience requires the avatar to realize the operator's behavior instantaneously as soon as possible. It is important to match the avatar's behavior with the operator's behavior because the difference between the operator and the avatar tends to hurt the immersiveness. However, the scale difference between an operator with the avatar makes behavior mismatch and lets the operator experience under different physical constant world. For instance, gravity changes under scale conversion telexistence. Therefore, our previous work reveals its importance termed equivalent gravity condition for walking using a small biped robot. Thus, in this demonstration, we use a small biped robot as the different-scale avatar allow us to experience as if we are within the small robot. Attendees experience several steps walking under different gravity conditions.

In this work, we proposed the control method that enable intuitive operation, “tsumori control”. Tsumori control is implemented using human discrete intention of motion included in continuous and intuitive motion output. The experience operating a robot using tsumori control will be demonstrated for our control system.

The mechanism by which cathodal current stimulation exerts inhibitory effects on the five basic tastes is revealed herein. The objective of this paper is to successfully achieve inhibition of sweetness by cathodal current electrical stimulation to the tongue, which has not been reported to date, though inhibition of salty and umami perception has been documented. By focusing on the electrophoresis of ions generated by dissolution of taste-inducing substances in water, this paper indicates how human gustation is inhibited by electrical stimulation, which is a key addition to the knowledgebase for achieving control of all five basic tastes.

Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) is known to provide a proprioceptive drift toward the direction where the rubber hand is tapped. On the other hand, Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) induce an entire body shift from a third-person Point of View (PoV). These experiences are known to trigger external passive tactile cues. Telexistence allows an entire body shift from a first-person PoV, compared to RHI and OBE. However, the precise origin of the entire localization is not revealed when we actively provide the internal voluntary tactile cue. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on the effects of tactile cues to determine self-localization during the action of self-tapping. Participants viewed and tapped their own body on the back, and evaluated where on their body they perceived the tapping. The experiments show that the localized position tends to shift forward when an individual is tapped by a third-person; in contrast, the localized position tends to shift backward when an individual is tapping his own back. The subjective report indicates that participants perceived themselves as leaving their own bodies, or that someone appeared in front of them suddenly. Thus, we consider that self-produced tactile cue induces telexistence experience.

In this paper, we propose a haptic transmission system for telexistence to improve the ability to sense the presence of remote objects. This system can transmit information about the existence and surface textures of objects in remote locations. The system consists of a conjugated haptic sensor and display. The sensor on the robot's finger detects the pressure, vibration, and temperature of a remote object, and the display provides above information on the operator's finger. Based on this information, the operator can understand what he/she is touching and whether its surface is hard or soft, cold or hot, and smooth or rough. With the use of our system, the operator can recognize the difference between objects such as silk and denim.

Along public pathways, visual signs and audio cues are used by pedestrians to guide them into forming smoother pedestrian flows. However, often ignored or neglected, these signals require greater pedestrian attentiveness and appropriate conscious effort. To solve this problem, we have proposed the concept of "vection field". This is a field of optical flow that cues movement according to a pedestrian's motion. Visual stimulus within this optical flow leads pedestrians innately in specific directions without requiring direct interventions. We have implemented such a field by covering the ground with a lenticular lens screen; in this setup, neither power supply nor position tracking of pedestrians is necessary. An experimental result from our previous study shows that a vection field can direct pedestrians to one side. However, the quality of the optical flow such as image clarity and smoothness of motion was unsatisfactory in that it could cause a reduction in leading inducement. In this paper, we describe in detail a new display method involving a lenticular lens screen that yields an improvement in the quality of the vection field and ultimately pedestrian optical flow. Experiments showed improvements over previous attempts.

This paper focuses on design of a dexterous anthropomorphic robot where the operator can perceive the transferring bodily consciousness to the slave robot during a tele-operation. Accordingly, we propose a telexistence surrogate anthropomorphic robot called “TELESAR V”, which was designed and constructed by development of the following: a 52 DOF slave robot with a torso, upper limbs, hands and head to model the operator's posture on all parts of the upper body and maintain a 6 DOF accuracy in arm endpoint; a HD Head mounted display with 6 DOF point of view accuracy for wide angle stereovision; and a mechanism for sensing and reproducing fingertip haptic and thermal sensation. This paper describes the development of the TELESAR V system, where the effectiveness has been verified through functional experiments.

Telexistence technology enables a highly realistic sensation of existence in a remote place without any actual travel. The concept was originally proposed by the first author in 1980, and its feasibility has been demonstrated through the construction of alter-ego robot systems such as TELESAR & TELESAR V, which were developed under the national large scale project on “Robots in Hazardous Environments” and the “CREST Haptic Telexistence Project.” A mutual telexistence system, such as TELESAR II & IV, capable of generating the sensation of being in a remote place in local space using a combination of an alter-ego robot and retro-reflective projection technology (RPT), has been developed, and the feasibility of mutual telexistence has been demonstrated. Thirty-two years of telexistence development are historically reviewed in this jubilee video.

We propose a tactile enhancement structure inspired by hair follicle receptors. Unlike other receptors, part of the hair follicle receptor is exposed to the outside. Recent research has shown that skin hair contributes to perception of minute forces that cannot be perceived with glabrous skin. We considered how the skin perceives these minute forces. Our tactile enhancement device mimics the structure of hair follicle receptors. A matrix structure simulating artificial body hair is driven by minute forces external to the skin surface. This structure can be used on any surface of the human body because it is fully composed of passive elements.