Kyoko Hamajima

A Gesture Model and Its Applications in Risk Assessment for Misrecognition

Before the gesture recognition is to be widely used as a new method for human-robot interface, some measurements are required for risk assessment and for risk reduction to assure safety, especially if the interface is to be used in action control for the robot working in human-robot cooperation style. In order to assess and to reduce the risk from misrecognition of gestures, a quantitative 3D model was proposed for representing gestures, and a quantitative measurement, called gesture distance, was proposed for the evaluation about how much the difference between gestures are. As the example of using the gesture distance, the method to implement the gesture recognition based on the gesture distance was briefly described, and then the risk assessment for a gesture recognition system was given based on the anthropometric data in Japanese Anthropometric Database.

Analysis of death labour accidents relating with drag-shovels and investigation of the countermeasure for safety

In Japan, we have more than 600,000 drag-shovels and the death labour accidents relating with drag-shovels happened more than 70 per a year until 2006. So that we analysed the accidents relating with drag-shovels in details. As a result, there are 4 types of labour accidents: a drag-shovel falls down due to its unstable condition, a burden hanged hits a worker, slope or trench collapses due to excavation and weight of a drag-shovel, a drag-shovel drives backward or pivots and hits a worker. It is revealed that a drag-shovel becomes unstable condition due to dynamic operation such as driving forward or pivoting in a slope and that a drag-shovel and worker are working together within the maximum excavation radius of the drag-shovel. As the countermeasure for the safety, we recommend the use of a drag-shovel with ROPS (Roll-Over Protective Structure) and fastening a seat belt, to set the maximum stable grade considered with dynamic operation, the system alerting both an operator and worker to their approach. Language: ja