Previous research has shown that workplace social norms influence employee well-being. However, such norms vary based on the cultures in which workplaces are embedded, suggesting that cultural differences may influence perceived norms about when and where work should occur. These differences, in turn, could impact employee well-being. Accordingly, through the lenses of cultural tightness-looseness and individualism-collectivism, this paper investigates cultural differences in perceived social norms, and the relationship between those norms and hybrid workers’ well-being. We conducted a survey of 1,000 Japanese and 1,000 American hybrid workers. Results indicated that American respondents perceived stronger norms and demonstrated a higher willingness to conform to norms compared to Japanese respondents. Additionally, strong injunctive norms were positively associated with well-being among Americans but not among Japanese. Interviews (N = 24) showed that Japanese perceived injunctive norms negatively, while Americans saw them positively. We discuss implications for future remote-collaboration technologies in hybrid-work settings.

To address the setup and changeover time issues in high-mix, low-volume production systems, we developed an end-effector capable of uniformly scooping, holding, and transporting a wide variety of objects, and demonstrated this system with prototype. Our experiments showed that the prototype was successful in scooping up and transporting a wide variety of objects and could be applied to high-mix low-volume production systems. In addition, the load testing of the spatula and modeling of objects that can be tilted backwards provided insight into further improvements of the scooping performance of this mechanism.

In V-process, ideas for a new system are repeatedly verified in an agile way using Model Based Development (MBD) in the early stages of a system development. Although verifying those ideas through simulations and/or in-depth analysis by writing detailed requirements specifications is possible, it is unrealistic due to difficulty of understanding relations among functions, and the development cost. In our preliminary experiment, we first construct abstract models and verify given ideas through those models. However, we find that the cost of preparing requirements specification documents and building consensus with the system concept designers and the model designers require considerable cost. To overcome the issue, we propose a requirements elicitation method using Goal Strucuturing Notations (GSN). We apply the proposed method to three automotive-domain system development projects. As a result, the cost of preparing requirement specification documents can be reduced compared to the conventional methods.

Previous studies have suggested that organizational social norms can positively affect employee well-being. However, such social norms have not been well developed during the post-COVID-19 transition to hybrid work, which combines office and remote work, and it is unclear how employees’ perceptions of social norms for hybrid work affect their well-being. In this study, we investigated the impact of social norms for hybrid work on the well-being of hybrid workers living in Japan through a mixed-method approach consisting of an online survey (n = 212) and semi-structured interviews (n = 20). The results indicate that hybrid workers who feel subject to strong social norms have lower well-being. Conversely, those who are more willing to conform to social norms have higher well-being. Given our findings, we discuss implications for the design of systems to help hybrid workers conform to organizational social norms and to improve their well-being.

Soft actuators have several advantages, including large deformation, safety and adaptability to the environment, and shock absorbance. However, they are weak against sharp objects owing to their soft bodies. This paper proposes a novel protective skin mechanism with an exhaustive arrangement of tiny rigid bodies. Small pieces were sewed on an elastic sheet using Kevlar strings. We conducted some measurements of puncture resistance, elasticity, and descaling resistance of the scale mechanisms. The results indicate that the elasticity of the proposed scale mechanism was just 150% larger than a simple silicone sheet. In addition, approximately 15 N was required for descaling, which is seven times larger than that of the glued scales. There was no puncture even when pricked with a needle.

Rescue robots that search around on debris during natural disasters require high mobility to overcome various shaped materials scattered in the environment. Our previous study developed a new tracked mechanism called Mono-wheel Track, an elastic track driven by a single wheel, having a high capability to get over obstacles. In designing the MW - Track, the track stiffness is an essential factor-the flexible track can adapt to the geometry of the obstacles, but the flexibility prevents grousers from anchoring to the environment steadily. If the track has different localized stiffnesses, both the adaptability and the stability might be archived. In this study, we developed an “anisotropic-stiffness track,” exhibiting different stiffness depending on the bending side, and investigated its deformation characteristics and the effects on mobility. The basic deformation characteristics of the track were confirmed by load tests. The effects on mobility were evaluated by step-climbing tests, ditch-crossing tests, and traction measuring with a mobile robot.

We propose a novel toroidal origami monotrack capable of smooth-skin driving and bending for closed-skin-drive robots. Monotracks are a promising solution for achieving high mobility in unstructured environments. Toroidal-drive mechanisms enable whole skin drive; however, conventional methods experience unexpected wrinkling and buckles that lead to a large resistance. In this study, we propose an origami bellows structure with multiple rollers that can maintain the skin tension and deal with the cause of large friction between the skin and the body. The origami structure design method is presented, and the bending angle range and required drive force were derived through a theoretical analysis. The validity of the effectiveness of the concept was verified through prototype testing.

Machines tend to use powerful actuators and large gearboxes to bear large loads, which are inconvenient in terms of responsiveness as they affect the duration of operations. Thus, to compensate the force to grasp an object, we propose a clamping mechanism implementing the internally-balanced magnetic unit (IB Magnet) as a force amplifier, which is a mechanism able to switch attached and detached states of a permanent magnet with an external force considerably smaller than its original attractive force. To realize the bi-parting constitution of fingers, a new compensation method using conical coil springs was designed to provide both precision and miniaturization. Relative to the constitution with a single motored screw, the prototype gripper for proof of concept successfully amplified the grasping force at most to 292.2% assisted by the magnetic attraction, while keeping the increase in power consumption of a DC motor only by 11.8%, making the force-energy efficiency 2.6 times larger. Thus, it was verified that the proposed gripper enables the use of actuators and current supplies that require less power.

People with visual impairments or blindness (VIB) face many problems when they enter unfamiliar areas by themselves. To address this problem, we aim to enable people with VIB to walk alone, even in unfamiliar areas. We propose a navigation method that enables people with VIB to imagine structures such as staircases easily and thus move safely when walking alone even in unfamiliar areas. An experiment is conducted with six participants with VIB walking up or down stairs with four different structures in an indoor environment. Its results verify that the proposed method could provide appropriate amounts of guidance messages and convey the messages in a safer manner than the existing method.

To detach a permanent magnet using a control force much smaller than its original attractive force, the internally-balanced magnetic unit (IB Magnet) was invented. It has been applied to magnetic devices such as wall-climbing robots, ceiling-dangling drones, and modular swarm robots. In contrast to its significant reduction rate with regard to the control force, the IB Magnet has two major problems in its nonlinear spring, which serves the purpose of cancelling out the internal force on the magnet. These problems include the complicated design procedure and the trade-off relationship between balancing the precision and the volume of the mechanism. This paper proposes a principle for a new balancing method for the IB Magnet. This method uses a like-pole pair of magnets as a magnetic spring, whose repulsive force should equal the attractive force of an unlike-pole pair. To verify the proposed principle, a prototype of the IB Magnet was designed using a magnetic spring and verified through experiments such that its reduction rate is comparable to those of conventional IB Magnets. Moreover, a robotic clamp was developed as an application example that contains the proposed IB Magnets as its internal mechanism.

Currently, drone research and development has received significant attention worldwide. Particularly, delivery services employ drones as it is a viable method to improve delivery efficiency by using a several unmanned drones. Research has been conducted to realize complete automation of drone control for such services. However, regarding the takeoff and landing port of the drones, conventional methods have focused on the landing operation of a single drone, and the continuous landing of multiple drones has not been realized. To address this issue, we propose a completely novel port system, "EAGLES Port," that allows several drones to continuously land and takeoff in a short time. Experiments verified that the landing time efficiency of the proposed port is ideally 7.5 times higher than that of conventional vertical landing systems. Moreover, the system can tolerate 270 mm of horizontal positional error, ±30° of angular error in the drone’s approach (±40° with the proposed gate mechanism), and up to 1.9 m/s of drone’s approach speed. This technology significantly contributes to the scalability of drone usage. Therefore, it is critical for the development of a future drone port for the landing of automated drone swarms.

Recently, digital signages are widely utilized to provide information for tourists in plural languages, but it takes longer time to offer information in each language separately. Although simultaneous multilingual display is expected to reduce the time for presentation, there is no guideline for simultaneous multilingual display to keep its legibility. In order to estimate the effect of layout on legibility, the authors prepared contents which have different layout factors and conducted evaluated the legibility of contents with Thurstone’s pairwise comparison. Since the number of combinations in layout factors increases exponentially, the number of stimuli was reduced using an orthogonal table. As a result, significant differences were found in some layout factors and it was found that horizontal arrangement of images and sentences, left alignment in sentences, middle margin from screen edge and medium-sized images made contents more legible.

Pairwise comparison has been widely employed as an easy method for subjective evaluation of several candidates to develop new products or to improve service. In this paper, a method using response time was proposed to improve the accuracy of pairwise comparison. Firstly, a pairwise comparison experiment was conducted to investigate the relationship between response time and difficulty of judgement. Then, a method to improve the accuracy of calculated scales of the objects was proposed where the answer of the pairwise comparison was modified by using the response time and correction function. In this study, three correction functions were compared to find the difference of the accuracy improvement, and two of them showed significant improvement.

We introduced the disturbance degree of ground and proposed an evaluation method to measure the mobile performance of a crawler on soft ground during direction switching. First, we developed a planar omnidirectional crawler, which had a configuration with two left and right unit crawlers for performing turning motion, as the target for evaluation. Second, by utilizing the proposed disturbance degree of ground evaluation method, we investigated how the turning and translational motions of the crawler mechanism affected soft ground by measuring the flow of sand on a horizontal surface. It was quantitatively shown that translational motion switched the travel direction with lesser disturbance to the road surface compared to turning motion. We confirmed that ground disturbance could be evaluated during direction switching using the proposed method.

In this paper, we propose an epoch-making soft sheet actuator called “Wavy-sheet”. Inspired by gastropod's locomotion, Wavy-sheet can generate continuous traveling waves on the whole soft body. It aims to be applied to a mobile soft mat capable of moving and transporting without damaging the object and the ground. The actuator, driven by pneumatics, is mainly composed of a couple of flexible rubber tubes and fabrics. The advantages are: i) many traveling waves can be generated by just three tubes, ii) the whole structure can adapt its own shape to the outer environment passively, and iii) only 10 mm in thickness and can generate waves with larger than 10mm in amplitude. In this paper, first, we describe the basic concept of Wavy-sheet, and then show the configuration and the principle of wave propagation. Next, fabrication methods are illustrated and the design methods are addressed. By using a prototype actuator, several experiments are conducted. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed actuator and its design methods.

As the number of international tourist has been rapidly increasing recently, they have more opportunities to experience different cultures. With the upcoming Olympic game in Tokyo, Japan 2020, digital signage is expected to be utilized for an effective information presentation device for them. This study focuses on the information presentation with four-frame comic for foreign tourists to improve cross-cultural understanding. A subject experiment was conducted to compare four information presentation methods including the four-frame comic from the viewpoint of attractiveness and easy memorization. Participants from various countries watched Japanese food tradition information with four information presentation methods (four-frame comic, photograph, illustration and video) and evaluated their impressions. As a result, it was found that four-frame comic was easy to memorize although its attractiveness was different depending on the participants. However, as the experiment was conducted in a controlled laboratory, it is necessary to conduct a field study using a digital signage in the city to investigate the effective information method.

This paper presents an aerial robot with a manipulator to implement door opening mission. Although general aerial robots have advantages of flying in the three-dimensional space freely, they don't have any capability of moving to another room when the door is closed. To overcome this problem, we propose a new configuration of an aerial manipulator with perching function, knob-twisting function, and door-pushing function. Perching function can be achieved by integration of door-approach control, the mechanism for perching and attitude-change control. With regard to knob-twisting function, the design concept of a light-weight manipulator generating large enough force to twist the knob is introduced, which is composed of a soft-bag actuator with variable restriction to perform the arbitrary curved trajectory. On the other hand, the door pushing force is aimed to be generated by the lift of the propeller, which is helpful to avoid gaining the additional weight. The validity of the proposed methods is experimentally verified by using the developed prototype.

We introduce a Japanese Kana-character entry method on touch screens for visually impaired people. Our proposal, "Move&Flick," allows the user to move a single finger in any of eight directions twice without lifting the finger on the screen to select a character; lifting the finger decides the character. The method uses radial areas with dead zones to detect each of the eight movement directions. An experiment shows that the dead zones and voice feedback let the user acquire proper finger directions in an easy learning process. The method also has an algorithm to correctly detect the change point from the first movement direction to the second movement direction. We evaluate Move&Flick in an experiment with visually impaired subjects and confirm that Move&Flick works well.

We consider a precoding method in downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission with multiple base station (BS) cooperation where some of the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) is not available at the BSs. The proposed precoding method is based on block diagonalization of the channel matrix. However, since some elements of the channel matrix are unknown, we allow a partially non-orthogonal transmission. More specifically, we allow inter-user interference to users with limited instantaneous CSI feedback from the channel where the instantaneous CSI of that user is not obtained at the BSs. The other inter-user interferences are set to zero based on the block diagonalization of the channel matrix. The proposed method efficiently uses the degree of freedom of the spatial channel compared to the case with full orthogonal transmission at the cost of increased inter-user interference to the users with limited instantaneous CSI feedback. Simulation results show that the proposed method increases the capacity for a given transmission power or decreases the transmission power for a given capacity requirement compared to the case with full orthogonal transmission.

This paper proposes the feedback-based evaluation tool for Web accessibility. The tool collects users' assessments of the evaluation results as feedback, and its evaluation-rules are improved based on the assessments. Utilizing this framework, the evaluation tool becomes more precise and extracts more accessibility problems than existing tools. We implemented the proposed evaluation tool as a web service and conducted a field test. The feasibility of collecting users' assessments and their quality is confirmed.

Recent studies on directional media access control (MAC) protocols using smart antennas for wireless ad hoc networks have shown that directional MAC protocols outperform traditional omni-directional MAC protocols. Those studies evaluate performance primarily based on a simulations, where antenna beam is assumed to be ideal, i.e., with neither side-lobes nor back-lobes. Propagation conditions are also assumed to be based on a mathematical model without realistic fading. However, for the real application of ad hoc networks those optimistic assumptions do not hold anytime. In this paper, we develop at first a testbed for directional MAC protocols which enables investigation of the performance of MAC protocols in a real environment. It incorporates ESPAR as a practical smart antenna, IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee, GPS and gyro modules to allow easy installation of different MAC protocols. To our knowledge, it is the first compact testbed with a practical smart antenna for directional MAC protocols. We implement a directional MAC protocol called SWAMP to evaluate it in a real environment. The empirical discussion based on the experimental results shows the degradation of the protocol with ideal antennas, and it shows that the protocol still achieves the SDMA effect of spatial reuse and the effect of communication range extension.

We have developed a virtual reality collaborative environment on volume communications environment, which is a tele-immersive collaboration environment on a grid infrastructure. The system is targeted to develop this tools; it is an integrated environment consisting of a real time information sharing system between remotely located researchers and a three-dimensional (3D) image-based real-time communication system. To evaluate the system's functionality and performance, we have used it for real research problems, in the medical areas. This paper describes the system and effectiveness of virtual reality.

Performance of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) routing protocols may be greatly degraded due to involvement of weak links in the routes. One solution is to use directional antenna to improve link quality. The other is to less prefer weak links. In the experiments we found that even with the two methods the system performance is still limited in the presence of mobility and multipath fading due to the following facts: (1) beam scanning overhead and frequent beam variations, (2) route instability due to metric variation and false link breaks. Then we improve it by three schemes: (i) Calculate the antenna beam by position information, (ii) Calculate a stable link metric from the expectation value of received signal strength indication (RSSI). (iii) Avoid false link breaks. These schemes are suitable for the scenarios where both line of sight path and multipath fading exist. The experiment and simulation results indicate that the schemes can effectively reduces PER and improve throughput of AODV in the Rician fading situations.

We developed VoiceBlog, a voice browser based on the concept of universal design. It has a cascading user interface, has a hierarchic structure, and can well parse strictly structured Web content such as blogs. We investigated whether VoiceBlog could function as a voice browser by observing blind users of VoiceBlog and then interviewing them. After using VoiceBlog for a while, most users felt that VoiceBlog made it much easier to read and understand Web content than common voice browsers. The cascading user interface is seen as one of the best methods for aural presentation. However, some users complained about the synthesized voice and key-mapping, mainly because these differed from the voice browsers' voice and key-mappings the users were familiar with. We also compared the operation logs of sighted and blind users and found that there were some differences in their demands. The results suggest that it is difficult to make one mechanism that suits both sighted and blind users. A universally designed voice browser should prepare different kinds of mechanisms (modes) and switch between them according to the users.

Despite many routing protocols proposed for mobile ad hoc networks few have considered link quality and route stability. Weak links contained in the routes often lead to route breaks. Multipath fading and mobility make link quality timevariant. When the link metric is associated with link quality the routes may change frequently. In times of transmission failure due to collision or fading, the routing packets are susceptible to loss owing to the lack of retransmission mechanism for the broadcast packets. For these reasons, the routes become unstable. In this paper, we investigate the long-term link quality and route stability in the on-demand routing protocols. We compare the link metric policies, optimize the route discovery and use the soft detection scheme to avoid false link breaks. The simulation results show that both Packet Error Ratio (PER) and throughput in the enhanced on-demand routing protocol can be greatly improved under the Rayleigh fading environment.

We have constructed a diagnostic support system for circulatory disease based on a volume communications environment. This system is based on a VizGrid environment, i.e. an integrated environment consisting of a data archiving system, a collaboration system, and a computational grid system. In this system, we simulate blood flow in a patient's individual blood vessel geometry and blood vessel wall using a weak coupling method. This system can be used with three-dimensional images from CT/MRI, for medical treatment and for simulating blood flow in a blood vessel with circulatory disease in a volume communications environment. With this system, it becomes easy for researchers in remote locations to collaboratively discuss the relevant object, even for complex explanations like the simulation results.

In mobile ad hoc networks on-demand routing protocols are very attractive due to low overhead. In these protocols, however, (1) the routes tend to contain weak links that have a low rate and high packet error ratio; (2) the routes are susceptible to breaks in the presence of mobility. Our major concern in this paper is to locally optimize the routes in the on-demand routing protocols in terms of link quality and mobility. The local optimization is realized by two main techniques: relating link metric with received signal strength and preferring the route with a shorter metric through trigger update (TU). In this manner the initial routes converge to the local optimum in the static case, and adapt to topology variations and link quality changes caused by mobility. Also, the routing overhead is controlled. Simulation results show that AODV with the application of local optimization (AODV-TU) achieves a much higher performance than the original AODV

In cardiovascular biomechanics the fluid-structure interaction within large blood vessel is required to understand the aortic wall tear, aortic dissection and so on. A loosely coupled method was used to study the complex mechanical interaction under pulsatile flow in a three-layered aortic arch model. The results showed the variations of wall stress along arch portion, and wall stress distribution in three-layered wall. The study provide insight into the biomechanics of aortic dissection: at systolic acceleration phase, the highest normal stress in the media layer may be responsible for the tear and dissection extending into the media layer; at foot entrance flow, the shear stress might contribute to the dissection in the media near the adventitia layer.

We are developing a volume communications environment, which is a teleimmersive collaboration environment on a grid infrastructure. The system is targeted to develop this tools; it is an integrated environment consisting of a real time information sharing system between remotely located researchers and a three-dimensional (3D) image-based real-time communication system. To evaluate the system’s functionality and performance, we have used it for real research problems, in the medical areas. This paper describes the current prototype and development status.

This paper reports an image-processing algorithm for robust inspection of LSI wafer patterns using SEM. In order to detect defects in a regular LSI pattern, a pair of long patterns are compared, blocked images are aligned, and defects are judged using the aligned images. The LSI wafer pattern is defined to consist of blank space, fine repetitive patterns, and unique patterns. Distortion of the SEM image is larger than the repetitive pattern pitch, requiring the system to keep track of the alignment in areas without pattern information or in blank space and mitigate the indeterminacy of repetitive patterns. To satisfy these requirements, a two-layer algorithm is proposed. The lower layer calculates registration candidates in each block, and the upper layer determines the correct registration route, i.e. the chain of the correct registration, using candidate information in all the related blocks. Experimental evaluations confirm that most pattern cases can be inspected correctly using the proposed SEM inspection system.

A problem with I/sub DDQ/ testing is its inability to predict defect level. This paper classifies defects detected by I/sub DDQ/ testing into two categories: those that can be modeled by stuck-at-fault (SAF) model and those that can not be modeled by SAF, based on statistical analysis of production failures and field failures. A new approach for curve fitting to a classical model is presented. The effect of a pass/fail limit on test quality is discussed.

Magnification variations due to changes in focus setting pose problems for vision techniques, such as, depth from focus and defocus. The magnification of a conventional lens can be made invariant to defocus by simply adding an aperture at an analytically derived location. The resulting optical configuration is called "telecentric". It is shown that most commercially available lenses can be turned into telecentric ones. The procedure for calculating the position of the additional aperture and a detailed analysis of the photometric and geometric properties of telecentric lenses are presented. Experiments are reported that use a phase-based shift detection algorithm to demonstrate the magnification invariance of telecentric lenses.

A fundamental problem in depth from defocus is the measurement of relative defocus between images. We propose a class of broadband operators that, when used together, provide invariance to scene texture and produce accurate and dense depth maps. Since the operators are broadband, a small number of them are sufficient for depth estimation of scenes with complex textural properties. Experiments are conducted on both synthetic and real scenes to evaluate the performance of the proposed operators. The depth detection gain error is less than 1%, irrespective of texture frequency. Depth accuracy is found to be 0.5/spl sim/1.2% of the distance of the object from the imaging optics.

Structures of dynamic scenes can only be recovered using a real-time range sensor. Depth from defocus offers an effective solution to fast and dense range estimation. However, accurate depth estimation requires theoretical and practical solutions to a variety of problems including recovery of textureless surfaces, precise blur estimation, and magnification variations caused by defocusing. Both textured and textureless surfaces are recovered using an illumination pattern that is projected via the same optical path used to acquire images. The illumination pattern is optimized to maximize accuracy and spatial resolution in computed depth. The relative blurring in two images is computed using a narrow-band linear operator that is designed by considering all the optical, sensing, and computational elements of the depth from defocus system. Defocus invariant magnification is achieved by the use of an additional aperture in the imaging optics. A prototype focus range sensor has been developed that has a workspace of 1 cubic foot and produces up to 512/spl times/480 depth estimates at 30 Hz with an average RMS error of 0.2%. Several experimental results are included to demonstrate the performance of the sensor.

Structures of dynamic scenes can only be recovered using a real-time range sensor. Depth-from-defocus offers a direct solution to fast and dense range estimation. It is computationally efficient as it circumvents the correspondence problem faced by stereo and feature tracking in structure-from-motion. However, accurate depth estimation requires theoretical and practical solutions to a variety of problems including the recovery of textureless surfaces, precise blur estimation, and magnification variations caused by defocusing. Both textured and textureless surfaces are recovered using an illumination pattern that is projected via the same optical path used to acquire images. The illumination pattern is optimized to ensure maximum accuracy and spatial resolution in the computed depth. The relative blurring in two images is computed using a narrow-band linear operator that is designed by considering all the optical, sensing and computational elements of the depth-from-defocus system. Defocus-invariant magnification is achieved by the use of an additional aperture in the imaging optics. A prototype focus range sensor has been developed that produces up to 512/spl times/480 depth estimates at 30 Hz with an accuracy better than 0.3%. Several experimental results are included to demonstrate the performance of the sensor.>