When infants are hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) due to prematurity, low birth weight, or congenital conditions, families are physically separated from their infants. In particular, young siblings are frequently restricted from visiting due to infection control and safety considerations. Our preliminary web-based survey revealed a gap between parents’ desire for sibling visitation and the actual opportunities available. To address this issue, we investigated the potential of a multisensory online visitation approach. We adopted an embodied online visitation system that connects the NICU and a pediatric outpatient via a network, allowing siblings and parents to experience real-time audiovisual information of the infant combined with heartbeat-synchronized vibrotactile feedback. Compared to conventional screen-based visitation, the multisensory system was associated with increased perceived closeness to the infant. Siblings generally exhibited positive feelings, and parents valued the opportunity to share the experience as a family. These findings point to the design value of enabling shared family co-experience as a means of supporting sibling–infant bonding in healthcare contexts.

Prolonged hospitalization in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) limits family–infant interaction, affecting parental mental health and bonding. We proposed a multisensory embodied online visitation system that supports family–infant interaction despite physical separation through a chest-held device delivering live video and vibrotactile heartbeat sensation from the infant. Preliminary interviews with families suggested that the system enhanced a sense of holding the infant, while also revealing design issues related to device tactile qualities. Based on families’ feedback, we prepared six texture types and evaluated them with NICU nurses who routinely care for neonates. The bean bag cushion with an embedded vibrotactile actuator ranked highest, as it better evoked the act of holding an infant by fitting naturally in the arms. Qualitative insights further highlighted softness and deformability as key factors. These findings inform device design for enhancing embodiment in online visitation and supporting family-centered neonatal care.

Prolonged hospitalization of newborns (e.g., extremely preterm infants or extremely low birth weight infants) in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) often limits physical interactions between parents and their infants, potentially impairing parental mental health and parent-child bonding.Research has shown that skin-to-skin contact reduces postpartum depression and enhances parental sensitivity.However, in-person visitation is often restricted by factors such as time and geographical barriers.This study introduces an online system for embodied communication, where families hold a haptic feedback device with a display against their chest as if holding an infant.The device allows families to view live video of their infant while feeling their infant's heartbeat through vibrotactile feedback.The system was evaluated against two types of online visitation: screen-based visuals only and screen-based visuals with vibrotactile feedback.The proposed system improved parents' psychological closeness to their infant, giving a sense of holding their infant and offering comfort.These findings emphasize the value of multisensory interfaces in family-centered neonatal care.

In this paper, a new position sensorless maximum torque per ampere control method at low-speed region for interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSMs) has been proposed. In the proposed method, it is utilized the high frequency square-wave voltage signal injection method based on the “Ldmodel”, which is a robust mathematical model designed to address magnetic saturation in IPMSMs. Some simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Global three-dimensional wind measurement is important for weather prediction' climate studies' and various meteorological studies. Current space-based passive sensors can make wind measurements with a large coverage area and high temporal and horizontal resolutions but has a low vertical resolution. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) wants to develop space-based wind profiling systems. A space-based Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) is one of useful and promising remote sensing techniques to fill the gap of current observations. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is developing a single-frequency high-energy Tm,Ho:YLF laser, 1-μm key technology and instrument for a future space-based coherent DWL. In the paper' we will describe recent progress and results of development of 1-μm key technology.

This paper proposes a current control system using inverter overmodulation range by applying voltage phase reference filter for Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (IPMSMs). Utilizing the overmodulation range can expand the operation range of IPMSMs with same battery unit. However, operation range cannot be expanded appropriately without countermeasure against harmonic components. The proposed control system can improve the current control performance by 1) applying the filter to the voltage phase reference and 2) varying the filter utilizing rate by the proposed filter switching algorithm without any motor parameters.

Radiation therapy and some chemotherapeutic agents mainly target the DNA of growing cancer cells, whereas these therapies have adverse side effects, including p53-induced apoptosis of normal tissues and cells. It is considered that p53 would be a target for therapeutic and mitigative radioprotection to escape from the apoptotic fate. So far, only three radioprotective p53 inhibitors have been reported, namely, pifithrin-α (PFTα), pifithrin-μ (PFTμ), and sodium orthovanadate (vanadate), which protect mice from acute lethality due to hematopoietic syndrome, indicating that pharmacologically temporary suppression of p53 effectively minimize the radiation damage. In this study, we examined the inhibitory activity of some zinc(II) chelators against radiation-induced apoptosis of MOLT-4 cells, based on the assumption that the binding of these compounds to zinc(II) in p53 proteins or removal of zinc(II) from the protein would temporally inhibit the function of p53. However, we have had some problems. The development of drug has been slow, due to the time required and the high cost of screening candidate compounds. It is possible to efficiently search for drugs by using machine learning. So we predict compounds that radioprotectors using Random Forest to study compound futures and using other machine learning methods for comparison with Random Forest. Procedure of learning is as follows: First, compounds were divided into several groups based on the toxicity and protection capability. Next, it was performed classification using machine learning. These results may contribute to discover of new radioprotectors.

A new asynchronous delay-insensitive data-transmission method based on level-encoded dual-rail (LEDR) encoding with novel packet-structure restriction is proposed to realize a high-throughput network-on-chip (NoC) router together with a compact hardware. The use of LEDR encoding makes communication steps and the registers being used half in comparison with four-phase dual-rail encoding because the spacer information of the four-phase one is eliminated, which significantly improves the network throughput. By using the proposed packet structure, the phase information of header and tail flits is uniquely determined. Since the router can be asynchronously controlled by ignoring the phase information, the circuit is compactly implemented. As a result, the proposed asynchronous NoC router on a 0.13-μm CMOS technology, has a 90 percent increase in throughput and a 34 percent decrease in energy dissipation with 25 percent area overhead in comparison with a conventional four-phase asynchronous NoC router under a postlayout simulation. Under a random traffic pattern in a 4 x 4 2D mesh topology, the proposed asynchronous NoC has a 140 percent increase in throughput and half packet latency compared with the conventional one. We also fabricate the asynchronous NoC based on the proposed router on a 0.13-μm CMOS technology and demonstrate the chip correctly operates under a supply voltage of 0.6 to 1.8 V.

In this paper, a novel correction method for current control of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) has been proposed. In the high speed region such as the voltage is saturated, the conventional current control system of PMSM does not support correct operation, because inverters cannot be considered ideal power converter as regards this region. It has been pointed out that this problem of system failure is occurred by the incomplete decoupling control. In general, the operation of the integrator of the PI current control system is stopped when voltage saturation occurs. In this context, the integrator holds the value it had at the instant when the limit value was exceeded, but this value is not necessarily appropriate for the efficient decoupling control. For solving this problem, we propose a novel integral values correction method. The proposed correction method achieves stable operation also in the high speed region.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of channel estimation error on LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) uplink using coordinated multipoint (CoMP) joint reception (JR) in a heterogeneous network (HetNet). The uplink CoMP capacity in bits/sec/Hz/m2 in principle increases in proportional to the number/density of CoMP reception points (RPs). However, the data capacity is limited due to reference signal (RS) capacity for channel estimation in practical situations. In this paper, we model channel estimation error of LTE-A uplink assuming the use of de-modulation RS (DMRS) introduced in LTE-A with taking into account the property of DMRS. System-level simulation is carried out to evaluate the impact of channel estimation error on CoMP operation.

In this paper, a novel flux-weakening control method for Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (IPMSMs) has been proposed. The proposed flux-weakening control method is discussed on the Maximum Torque Control (MTC) frame, which is possible to realize simple and robust sensorless control system. First, the proposed flux model for position sensorless control of IPMSMs has been reviewed, in which this model can approximately estimate the MTC frame, which stands for a new coordinate aligned with the current vector at the the Maximum Torque Per Ampere (MTPA) control. Next, a new flux-weakening method suitable for this flux model has been proposed. Finally, some experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper proposes a multi-chip NoC approach for implementing centralized ECUs. Unlike the conventional approach where ECUs and sensors/actuators are connected tightly, it has potential to implement efficient and reliable systems for automotive applications. Then, this paper reports our experience of implementing our first chip designed for the multi-chip NoC platform, and shows some experimental results.

Multi-user multiple-input and multiple-output (MU-MIMO) is a key technology for enhancing the spectrum efficiency in cellular mobile communication systems. In the Long Term Evolution (LTE) -Advanced, orthogonal cover code (OCC) has been introduced for the uplink demodulation reference signal (DMRS), which provides orthogonality of the DMRS between different user equipment (UEs). This enables different bandwidth allocations for paired UEs of MU-MIMO, which enables flexible frequency selective scheduling and UE pairing. On the other hand, to further enhance the spectrum efficiency in LTE-Advanced, non-contiguous frequency resource allocation based on clustered discrete Fourier transform-spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (clustered DFT-S-OFDM), i.e., multi-cluster transmission, is supported. This paper presents frequency and spatial resource allocation for MU-MIMO with multi-cluster transmission, and evaluates the system performance of MU-MIMO in conjunction with multi-cluster transmissions via system level simulations considering the bandwidth allocation restriction for the paired MU-MIMO UE. It is shown that the combination of multi-cluster transmission and MU-MIMO with different bandwidth allocations significantly improve the performance.

Delay-insensitive asynchronous on-chip communication links are a key element to realize a highly reliable asynchronous Network-on-Chip system. However, even a single permanent fault, such as an interconnect fault, causes a deadlock state in the system. This paper presents an interconnect-fault-resilient delay-insensitive asynchronous communication link based on current-flow monitoring. Since current flow upon an interconnect is cut off by an open fault in the interconnect, the current is fed back to a transmitter, which increases a feedback current monotonically. Monitoring the feedback current makes it possible to detect the interconnect fault with delay insensitivity. The proposed link is evaluated by a 0.13μm CMOS technology with a Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR)-based asynchronous communication link which is resilient to the interconnect fault without the delay insensitivity. As a result, the energy consumption and the number of wires of the proposed link are reduced to 57% and 33%, respectively, in comparison with those of the conventional one.

Support of non-contiguous frequency resource allocation (FRA) based on clustered discrete Fourier transform-spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (clustered DFT-S-OFDM) is considered a key element of LTE-Advanced uplink to enhance the spectrum efficiency via an enhanced frequency domain scheduling. However, reduction of out-of-band emissions due to multiple clusters is a critical issue for clustered DFT-S-OFDM in an actual system. This paper verifies the system performance gain of clustered DFT-S-OFDM using power control (PC) with maximum power reduction (MPR) for suppression of out-of-band emissions, under realistic assumptions, including channel quality measurement error and power setting error. Simulation results show that the clustered DFT-S-OFDM improves the average throughput over DFT-S-OFDM, even with PC with MPR, but suffers some degradation due to the large fixed MPR. By applying a novel PC with autonomously adjusted MPR that depends on the separation of the clusters, no degradation of the performance gain is observed while satisfying the spectrum emission requirements.

A new gate-level power-gating scheme with a small power-gating controller is proposed for greedily power-aware asynchronous pipelined system. The power supply of each standby stage consisting of a combinational block and a pipeline latch can be cut off by a sleep transistor, because a condition of an asynchronous operation is always monitored by using signal conditions in adjacent stages, which completely eliminates wasted power dissipation in standby stages. Since sleep-transistor control signals in each stage are simply generated by just modifying asynchronous control signals in its adjacent stage, the power- gating controller can be realized by inserting a few basic logic gates. The efficiency of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by using HSPICE simulation. The leakage power dissipation of the asynchronous circuit using the proposed method is reduced to 11.8% in comparison with that of the asynchronous one using a conventional power-gating method.

In this paper, hybrid position/force control algorithms of combined flexible-macro/rigid-micro manipulator systems are proposed, In the proposed system, the micro manipulator is attached at the tip of the flexible macro manipulator. The macro manipulator can move widely, but cannot realize fast and precise motion because of its flexibility. On the contrary, the micro manipulator cannot move widely, but can move fast and precisely. By taking advantage of the macro/micro system, both the end point position and the force exerted by its end effector can be easily controlled in spite of the flexibility in the macro part. This paper first discusses trajectory planning for the macro/micro system. Second, a quasi-static hybrid control algorithm and a dynamic hybrid control algorithm are developed, In our control algorithms, the macro part is controlled roughly to realize the desired trajectory, and suppress vibration. The micro part is controlled to compensate for the position and force errors due to the elasticity in the macro part. Finally, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms, experimental results are shown.

We propose an agent-based parallel recognition method for digitizing contour lines. In this method, we introduce two kinds of agents, a supervisor agent and vector trace agents, and compose a cooperative negotiable environment between agents to pass through irregular parts of contour lines. This method is implemented in a new man-machine oriented digitizing system, and we confirm that an operator can simultaneously select multiple contour lines and continuously recognize routes of contour lines without interruption. These properties will reduce the high cost of inputting contour drawings.

In this paper, to realize the hybrid position/force control of a flexible manipulator, the macro-micro manipulator system is used. The macro manipulator can move widely, but can not realize fast and precise motion because of its flexibility. To compensate the position and force errors, a micro manipulator is attached at the tip of the macro manipulator. The kinematic equations of the macro-micro manipulator system are introduced. By utilizing the redundancy and flexibility of the system, the trajectory planning is discussed. A quasi-static hybrid position/force control algorithm and a dynamic hybrid position/force control algorithm are proposed. Lastly, experimental results are shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms.>