Neurologic examination takes an important role in diagnosis of the nerve system diseases. Neurologic medical staffs, especially the novices, need to be trained on this skill. There are many methodologies which can help to accumulate experiences, such as watching video, reading books, making use of the simulated patient (SP), and so on. However, the best way is to practice on the real patient. All the above methods have their own drawbacks such as lack of active interactions, limitation of multi-symptoms' reproducing, etc. To improve the training effectiveness, an arm robot is proposed in this paper for neurologic examination training as one part of the whole body patient robot named Waseda Kyotokagaku Patient (WKP). In this robot, various symptoms of the elbow force, biceps tendon reflex, involuntary action, and so on, are simulated and shown to the trainee. Finally, a set of experiments was carried out to verify our proposed mechanism and control system. Three neurologists with over 30 years' experience were invited to show their opinions on the reproductions of patients' symptoms, and to discuss the results. The effectiveness of this system was confirmed. The experimental results lead to the consideration that the approach is worth following in further research.

In recent years advanced robotic technology has seen more use in the medical field to assist in the development of efficient training systems. Such training systems must fulfill the following criteria: they must provide quantitative information, must simulate the real-world conditions of the task, and assure training effectiveness. We developed Waseda Kyotokagaku Airway series to fulfill all of those requirements. The WKA series we had developed does not consider external appearance such as patient skin, or internal appearance such as the pharynx, larynx, and esophagus. Moreover, the tongue mechanism of the previous system can not precisely measure the force applied by medical devices and cannot simulate muscle stiffness. In addition, the mandible mechanism of the previous system could not adequately reproduce various airway difficulties or apply force control. For these reasons, we propose the WKA-4, which has high-fidelity simulated human anatomy, and we have improved the mechanism over the previous system. We have also attached a lung to the proposed system to improve simulation of the real-world conditions of the task. In this paper, we present how to design several organs with various embedded sensors and actuators, for a conventional patient model with high-fidelity simulated human anatomy. We also present the control system for the WKA-4. Finally, we present a set of experiments carried out using doctors as subjects, and they gave their valuable opinions about our system.

In this paper we propose the basic concept of a tele-presence system for two (or more) anthropomorphic robots located in remote locations. As one robot interacts with a user, it acquires knowledge about the user's behavior and transfers this knowledge to the network. The robot in the remote location accesses this knowledge and according to this information emulates the behavior of the remote user when interacting with its partner. The behavioral patterns are grouped into macro-behavior units (maBUs) and mirco-behavior units (miBUs). maBUs carry information that is specific to a person-to-person communication. miBUs are commonly used behavior patterns within a certain cultural environment (e.g. handshake, bow etc). maBUs are usually chains of miBUs. miBUs are chains of expression actions (e.g. gesture, facial expression etc.). The idea behind this is, that human communication contains several levels or layers of information exchange. This to be emulated by implementing the concept of miBUs and maBUs. We present a preliminary application of this concept to a musical context. The rhythmic motion of a drum-stick during the performance of a drum rhythm by a musician is recorded by a inertial measurements unit and transmitted between two far distance locations (Waseda University in Japan and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany) using three different transmission methods: direct raw data transmission, miBU based transmission and maBU-based transmission. We present experimental results that show quantitative data to evaluate the suitability of our approach, with the overall goal to implement a telepresence system of larger scale.