In recent years, many studies have been conducted to realize easy route navigation for pedestrians using augmented reality (AR). Many of these studies use methods where the direction or sign is indicated using AR. However, only a few have focused on using AR for route navigation to follow. Our research aims to realize easy route navigation using an AR character agent. We develop a navigation application wherein the user follows an AR character agent. We evaluate it from the behavior of the user. For that purpose, we conduct an experiment at a university festival using the navigation application. We then analyze the experimental data and questionnaire responses. The results show that route navigation by the AR character agent makes route identification easy. However, problems involving many participants feeling uneasy or being lost are encountered. Problems in accuracy caused by errors in the positional information are also observed. In future, a method to indicate directions more accurately must be considered.

In this paper, we describe the structure of a Vision-Based Indoor Positioning (VBIP) system which is a pure software solution without any hardware deployment. We conducted an experiment by providing our VBIP system to navigate visitors through three different buildings with a total length over 350 m during Science and Technology Festival 2018 at Waseda University. This large scale experiment pointed out our incomprehensive thinking while designing the algorithm only based on human behavior, and motivated us to remodify our algorithm based on natural features in the environment. We further conducted another experiment and found out that our VBIP system is improved. VBIP system can now reduce the drift error of VIO (Visual Inertial Odometry) to around 1.4% for over 350 m tracking. For the experiment result, we believe that VBIP is one step closer to perfection.

Global problems, such as environmental issues, refugee crises, and food shortages, transcend borders and must be addressed at the international level. The goal of our research is to examine ways in which we can clarify common features, similarities, and differences in people's thinking to confront problems among people who speak different languages. In our study, we first designed an interactive analysis framework for analyzing the similarities and differences in thinking among different people. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed framework, we conducted experimental discussions combined with making a mind map about environmental issues among Chinese and Japanese-speaking participants. After the discussion activity, we analyzed the logs and mind maps by focusing on keywords and the flow of information. Our results showed that the participants had various ways of thinking about environmental problems and their solutions. We succeeded in summarizing the similarities and differences as discussion points and share them using our framework in a visible form.

The Walk Rally application is a mobile application that encourages users to walk around an area using mobile terminals. Several Walk Rally applications have been developed for use in various situations. However, depending on the area and the purpose of use, the information presented in the application and the functions required for it are different. Therefore, it is necessary to individually develop Walk Rally applications suitable for specific situations, and this of course becomes expensive. In this study, we developed a Walk Rally application development environment named Machinavi, where various functions are independently developed as business logic to enable use in various situations. Customizing the business logic to the purpose of use makes it possible to develop Walk Rally applications suitable for various situations. We used Machinavi to develop three Walk Rally applications for three specific situations: an event, a sightseeing spot, and a commercial area. The results of experiments and a questionnaire survey demonstrate the effectiveness of the Walk Rally applications developed using this development environment.

We investigated whether shoutengai, old shopping districts in Japan, can be revitalized by solving the disparity problem in the number of customers among shoutengai according to their location and by solving the problem of inequality in popularity among the stores in a shoutengai. We developed the “store appeal value”, which is unique index of showing the attractiveness of a store and developed a walk rally application based on incentives based on the store appeal value. We investigated whether shoutengai can be revitalized by using our walk rally application. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed application , we conducted a demonstration experiment involving three shoutengai in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. By analyzing the behavior logs obtained from the experiment, we clarified that our store appeal value is appropriate. We were also able to show that it is possible to revitalize shoutengai by using our walk rally application, that is, to distribute customers among shoutengai and among stores in a shoutengai.

At events and sightseeing spots, congestion can be a factor that lowers customer satisfaction, so there is need for methods that mitigate congestion. Currently, there are methods for mitigating congestion such as changing the layout of an event and restricting customer behavior. However, there are problems in that it is difficult to reduce congestion at events in which the layout cannot be changed, and there is a risk the satisfaction level will be reduced due to restricting customer behavior. Therefore, we propose a method aimed at reducing congestion by allowing users to voluntarily select a detour to avoid congestion by providing users with not only obvious information but latent information with a walk-rally application. In demonstration experiments at real events and sightseeing spots, we confirmed that the proposed method is effective at reducing congestion and clarified how to use latent information effectively for mitigating congestion.

In tourism, it is necessary to promote sightseeing areas and tourist amenities as well as to encourage repeat visits by improving the tourists' levels of satisfaction. In this paper, we focus on impressions of sightseeing spots as an important factor in improving tourist satisfaction. Many studies have analyzed the relationship between tourists' impressions of a sightseeing area and their overall evaluation of that area, but few studies have focused on the tourists' first impressions. We analyzed the tourists' first impressions of each sightseeing spot in the area and investigated the relationship between these first impressions and the tourists' overall evaluations of each spot. Our results showed that first impressions contributed to the tourists' satisfaction and increased the tourists' motivation to revisit. We also discovered that first impressions could be significantly changed by altering the way in which tourists navigate between sightseeing spots and the way in which spots are combined.

China is beset by environmental problems. This study focused on addressing China's environmental problems by using a language grid to provide a Japanese environmental education program, 'manufacturing soap from waste oil,' to Chinese students at home and evaluating their practice. The teaching and work experiments comprised observations of the knowledge-transfer process under a multilingual environment and the students 'work during experimental activities, respectively. The results show that a better training effect was obtained by the family groups who performed both teaching and work experiments than by the student groups who performed the teaching experiment only.

Tourist numbers have increased considerably in recent years and tourism is now a key industry in the world. While major tourism resources are attracting attention, there are other areas that also hold some value as tourist sites but are not recognized as such. In this paper, these sites are called 'potential sightseeing resources'. It is acknowledged that tourist sightseeing satisfaction will increase by visiting potential sightseeing resources. Thus, a method to recognize potential sightseeing resources is required. In this study, to effectively use potential sightseeing resources situated within various local events, we developed an application that acts as a guide system to support tourism, guiding users to potential sightseeing resources situated within the same areas as a local event. We also analyzed accelerated patterns leading users to potential sightseeing resources and verified the effects via an experiment. As a result, it was confirmed that the application was successful in leading users to potential sightseeing resources by the application, however, certain conditions are required for non-monetary incentives to be effective.