This paper introduces a novel interface ‘3D head pointer’ for the
operation of a wearable robotic arm in 3D space. The developed system is
intended to assist its user in the execution of routine tasks while
operating a robotic arm. Previous studies have demonstrated the difficulty a
user faces in simultaneously controlling a robotic arm and their own hands.
The proposed method combines a head-based pointing device and voice
recognition to manipulate the position and orientation as well as to switch
between these two modes. In a virtual reality environment, the position
instructions of the proposed system and its usefulness were evaluated by
measuring the accuracy of the instructions and the time required using a
fully immersive head-mounted display (HMD). In addition, the entire system,
including posture instructions with two switching methods (voice recognition
and head gestures), was evaluated using an optical transparent HMD. The
obtained results displayed an accuracy of 1.25 cm and 3.56° with the 20-s
time span necessary for communicating an instruction. These results
demonstrate that voice recognition is a more effective switching method than
head gestures.

© 2019 IEEE. This research focuses on robot hand control of telexistence robot to realize precise hand manipulation. A humanoid surrogate robot which possesses large number of DoF and works under master-slave controlling can reproduce operator's hand and finger movements, and therefore it will realize fine and delicate teleoperation as if the work were performed by operator's own hand. However, even though the robot hand moves with dexterity, the body size difference between operator and robot has great influence to the consistency of position and configuration of body-parts such as fingertips between them, and may lead the difficultly of manual teleoperation. The problem is how to manage various operator's body size and maintain the correspondence of the operator to the robot. To overcome this issue, we propose a novel method of robot hand control which is based on congruence of two vectors bellows: (1) thumb tip to opposite fingers and (2) point-of-view to thumb/fingers. Considering that the spatial relationship between thumb and opposite fingers are important to perform precise hand manipulation, to keep the vector makes replication of operator's handshape on the robot hand. Also, because the operator of telexistence robot sees robot's body-parts including hand via eye-camera as his/her surrogate body, to match the vector realizes consistent experiences about hand position and aids intuitive operation. The proposed method was implemented to the control system of newly developed telexistence robot 'TELESAR6' and the performance of hand manipulation using the method was evaluated.

© 2019 IEEE. This research focuses on finger motion measurement system of telexistence robot to realize precise hand manipulation. Wearable sensor glove which measures operator's finger joint angles is used in most cases for reproducing his/her finger motion to robot hand. However, angle-based finger motion measurement is difficult to estimate correct position of fingertip because of hand shape difference between individuals. On the other hands, optical position measurement such as motion capture can obtain exact position, but has problem of measuring stability because of occlusion. To overcome this issue, we propose a finger motion measurement system which consists of sensor glove with motion capture. To calibrate individual differences, the kinematic parameters of operator's hand such as bone length are estimated at first, and then the hand model predicts fingertip position from sensor glove data. Once the parameters are obtained, both motion capture and hand model provide position of fingertip in parallel, and the measurement becomes more stably against occlusion. The performances of the proposed system regarding parameter estimation and precision accuracy were evaluated during finger movement in 3D space.

© 2019 IEEE. Since human skin has tactile receptors for force, vibration, and temperature, if it can be presented, it is considered possible to present various textures based on the theory of haptic primary colors. In this study, we propose a haptic glove that enables the display of the three haptic elements. A haptic glove for one finger was developed by combining a thread drive actuator for force display from tactile to deep sensation and a vibration/temperature display device specialized for tactile presentation. We also showed that it is possible to present multiple softness to the finger. It is capable that combine the proposed haptic device and the vibro-thermal tactile unit to display Haptic Primary Colors. With our system, sensing of the finger is also capable of using a depth-sensing camera.

© (2018) by the International Measurement Confederation (IMEKO). All rights reserved. This paper focuses on realization of embodied remote communication via telexistence robot with augmented reality (AR). Though a robot equipped with communication functions can realize natural conversation remotely, the robot has to reproduce bodily expressions of the robot user for achieving embodied communication. A humanoid is optimal shape for the purpose, but this kind of robot is currently expensive and difficult to popularize. By contrast, a 3DOF head-moving robot is easier to develop, but the bodily expression capacity is limited. To solve the trade-off problem, we propose an AR-based presentation system visualizing additional body-parts of head-moving robot. The developed system consists of a head-mounted display (HMD) worn by an operator, a 3DOF robot controlled by the operator's head movement, and see-through AR glasses worn by an interlocutor who faces the robot. For visualizing bodily expression, the system generates 3D-CG image of virtual avatar which copies operator's body movements, and projects the image onto both operator's HMD and interlocutor's glasses simultaneously. Consequently, proposed system provides body gesture functions to 3DOF robot, and achieves embodied remote communication.

In this paper, we analyze the subjective feelings about the body of the operator of a telexistence system. We investigate whether a mirror reflection and self-touch affect body ownership and agency for a surrogate robot avatar in a virtual reality experiment. Results showed that the presence of tactile sensations synchronized with the view of self-touch events enhanced mirror self-recognition.

We have developed a classification method of tactile feeling using a stacked autoencoder-based neural network on haptic primary colors. The haptic primary colors principle is a concept of decomposing the human sensation of tactile feeling into force, vibration, and temperature. Images were obtained from variation in the frequency of the time series of the tactile feeling obtained when tracing a surface of an object, features were extracted by employing a stacked autoencoder using a neural network with two hidden layers, and supervised learning was conducted. We confirmed that the tactile feeling for three different surface materials can be classified with an accuracy of 82.0 [%].

We propose a real-time heat transfer simulation method which visualize heat behavior in virtual cooking interactively. Our method is a combination of finite element heat transfer simulation and rigid body dynamics simulation. We achieved to reproduce temperature changes on the surface of both a beef and an iron plate as cookware. Proposed simulator also targets changes of boundary condition; e.g.between the air and solid objects or solid objects and solid objects. The rigid body dynamics simulation calculates the collision between solid objects. An experimental implementation showed the computation speed is high enough for cookery with a multi-thread computation. We aim that our method will be useful for cooking technique practice, cookery prediction and cookery game.

We propose \\Interactive Cooking Simulator" which provides users with information of physical and chemical reaction state during cooking process. This system helps users to understand the physical and chemical changes that occurs during cooking process using visual information. We need to experience various cooking operations and the effects of each one to understand them well. However, we cannot sense the effects of the cooking operations in real-time. e.g., temperature, cooking progress of inner foods. For example, temperature inside the food ingredients during cooking can not be seen even with thermography camera. On the other hand, the cooking simulator can simulate inside states of the food ingredients and can present it to the users. We believe that the proposed system helps user to understand cooking operation effects. © Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Stuffed toys live with all ages and hold them in some physical and mental aspects. With the soft feel and cute characters, stuffed toys play with them, sleep together and listen to their complaints. These roles of stuffed toys show that people imagine stuffed toys are interactive creature. Indeed, there are many stories and movies in which stuffed toys work as living characters. However, stuffed toys in real world are just dolls and they cannot move and react. © 2012 ACM.

Stuffed toys live with all ages and hold them in some physical and mental aspects. With the soft feel and cute characters, stuffed toys play with them, sleep together and listen to their complaints. These roles of stuffed toys show that people imagine stuffed toys are interactive creature. Indeed, there are many stories and movies in which stuffed toys work as living characters. However, stuffed toys in real world are just dolls and they cannot move and react. © 2012 ACM.

Control of body position is important in skiing. During turn, novice skiers often lean back and lose their control. Leaning back is natural reaction for people. They are afraid of the slope or speed. We develop a device to provide realtime sonification feedback of the center of gravity of the skier. The device guides the position of skier. A preliminary experiment shows possibility of improvements that the user become to be able to control their position immediately and even to overcome the afraid of slope and speed. Copyright 2012 ACM.