A master-slave system has been used to operate a robot. This system is necessary to communicate human intentions to the robot. In this context, we focus on Myo-Electric (ME) potential. In many previous studies, a motor is used as an actuator, and the torque and position are estimated from the ME potential. However joint stiffness, which humans can change, is not considered. It is possible to solve this problem about the actuator by using the artificial muscle that we have studied, because the muscle can adjust joint stiffness. Therefore, it is necessary to estimate the joint stiffness of humans. In this study, we propose a method to estimate the stiffness of a human elbow. Furthermore, we apply our method to the 1-DOF manipulator of the artificial muscle.

Robots have become an integral part of human life, and the relationship between humans and robots has grown closer. Thus, it is desired that robots have characteristics similar to humans. In this context, we paid attention to an artificial muscle actuator. We used straight-fiber-type artificial muscles, derived from the McKibben type, which have excellent characteristics with respect to the contraction rate and force. We developed a 6-DOF manipulator actuated by a straight fiber artificial muscle. Furthermore, we tried to control the manipulator position by considering its characteristics.

This paper describes the methodology and prototype for an all-around display system for video avatar presentation in the real world. This system enables us to reconstruct a video avatar which users can look at from all around, by spinning a flat panel display which has a small viewing angle and changing the image on the display panel depending on the display's orientation.

This paper presents a unification-based approach to Japanese honorifics based on a version of HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar). Utterance parsing is based on lexical specifications of each lexical item, including honorifics, and a few general PSG rules using a parser capable of unifying cyclic feature structures. It is shown that the possible word orders of Japanese honorific predicate constituents can be automatically deduced in the proposed framework without independently specifying them. Discourse Information Change Rules (DICRs) that allow resolving a class of anaphors in honorific contexts are also formulated.