In incineration plants, indoor positioning systems are needed to prevent workers from approaching hazardous areas and to facilitate rescue operations in emergencies. Although many positioning systems using signal strength indicators such as Wi-Fi Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) have been proposed, the vast interior of incineration plants increases the cost of constructing a communication infrastructure using $\mathbf{5 G H z}$ Wi-Fi. Therefore, by adopting Low Power Wide Area (LPWA), which allows for long-distance communication, the number of Access points (APs) that need to be installed in the environment can be reduced, thus lowering the cost of constructing the communication infrastructure. IEEE 802.11ah (11ah) is a new LPWA standard that uses the Sub-GHz band. In this study, we deployed new 11ah receivers in an incineration plant where IEEE 802.11ac (11ac) is already established and evaluated their coverage and area classification performance. The experiment demonstrated that the entire incineration plant can be covered with fewer units compared to 11ac. Additionally, when a small number of 11 ah receivers were installed, the system identified individual rooms with higher accuracy than 11ac, suggesting that 11ah RSSI is a promising feature that can be obtained at low cost.

Utilization of haptic sensation for robots has advantages in various fields. Haptic rendering which is a technology to contact with virtual objects will be useful for virtual reality and simulation devices in medical and industrial fields. To realize these applications, technologies to extract environmental information and reconstruct virtual environments have been studied. In this paper, a force sensorless probe to obtain environmental information for a haptic rendering system is presented. Environmental information such as shape and stiffness is automatically recorded by the haptic probe driven by linear motors. By utilizing a large circular linear motor which has circular motion, haptic information of environments which have a two dimensional shape can be extracted by the device with simple structure. In experiments, the haptic probe contacts with an environment which has two kinds of stiffness. The recored environmental information is processed and rendered to an operator by a XY table composed of two linear motors. Experimental results show that the system can capture environmental information and it can be used for haptic rendering.

Master-slave surgical robots have been studied and developed to support surgeons. Robotic functions such as motion scaling and hand shaking correction can extend the ability of surgeons. However, some problems are remaining in robotic surgery. Operation time which can become the burden to surgeons is still long. Surgeons must assess the situation, decide the next task correctly, and achieve tasks precisely in long operation. By conducting a part of surgical tasks by automatic motion of surgical robots, the burden to surgeons can be reduced. However, surgical tasks require skill of surgeons. Therefore, human skill must be incorporated in robotic motion. In this paper, a teleoperation system to conduct a ligation task by both the teleoperation and the automatic motion is presented. The teleoperation system is composed of haptic forceps robots implementing the motion reproduction system which is a method to preserve and reproduce human motion by a master-slave system. A ligation task is achieved by the bilateral teleoperation and the reproduced motion in the experiment. The saved motion and the reproduced motion are evaluated to validate the usefulness of the teleoperation system implementing the motion reproduction system.

In medical field, teleoperation robots for surgery have been studied and developed to support surgeons. Surgical tasks such as needle insertion and suturing are realized by multi degree of freedom (DoF) forceps robots which are a component of a surgical robot. Besides, surgical robots have some advantages such as automation of tasks to reduce the burden to surgeons. Motion reproduction system is a method to automate tasks. The haptic data is used as the data of human motion for motion reproduction system. However, realization of tasks by using multi DoF robots as a motion reproduction system is still difficult. In this paper, in order to realize support for surgeons by automatic motion, needle insertion is realized by the haptic surgical robot composed of multi DoF haptic forceps robots. Experimental results show that the motion of operator was reproduced by using the haptic data, and automatic needle insertion based on motion reproduction system was achieved.

This paper presents the master-slave system which is composed of multi degrees of freedom (DoF) forceps robots. In minimally invasive surgery, there are some advantages for patients because incision is small. However, it is difficult for surgeons. Therefore, in order to support surgeons, surgical robots are studied and developed. Although conventional surgical robots have high position accuracy, the transmission of force sensation is not adequate. Therefore, two types of the five DoF surgical robot are developed to transmit force sensation. Force sensation can be transmitted by bilateral control. In this paper, the master-slave system with bilateral control is constructed. Two types of the five DoF surgical robot are used as two human hands. In the experiments, simple tasks are carried out and the transmission of force sensation is validated.

Bilateral control system makes it possible to transmit haptic sensation. When there is time delay between master and slave, position error occurs. This error is undesirable for delicate works. 3-channel bilateral control system can compensate this error, however asymmetric structure is problem. From this reason, operator can manipulate only master. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a compensation method of position error with symmetric structure in bilateral control system under time delay. The validity of the proposed method is verified through experiments.

This paper presents the design of a five degrees of freedom surgical robot suitable for laparoscopic surgery. Robots based on this design must fulfil the constraints of manipulability for the operating surgeon and the possibility of use through Master/Slave system as a tele-operated haptic device. The proposed robot is able to perform a full human-like wrist motion and operates a surgical forceps. Screenshots of both Computer- Aided Design and simulation results of the robot workspace, as well as the manipulability model are shown in this paper.

Three-axis tactile sensing has advantages for grasping an object of unknown mass and hardness. We developed a new three-axis tactile sensor that possesses a simple structure to endure a large applied force from a powerful grasp. Normal force distribution is measured based on grayscale values obtained by image data processing, as with previous three-axis tactile sensors. Tangential force distribution is determined by the linear movement of image data calculated by optical flow. The sensing characteristics of this sensor are dominated by the configuration and material of fine conical feelers formed on a silicon rubber sheet. By UV-LIGA, we obtain a fine mold of a silicon rubber sheet. In evaluation experiments, we applied both normal and tangential force to the sensor and confirmed this tactile sensor's ability to acquire normal and tangential forces. In its design, we utilize a USB microscope that has a CMOS camera and a light source. In a series of experiments, we performed normal and tangential force tests to obtain its basic characteristics. The linear relationship between the grayscale value and the normal force is obtained from the normal force test. If the average optical flow is under 0.2 mm, the tangential force is proportional to the average optical flow. The slope of the relationship between the tangential force and the average optical flow increases with additional normal force. Finally, we derive a series of equations for three-axis force calculation.