Mihoko Niitsuma

Spatial human interface in working environment - spatial-knowledge-tags to access memory of activity

The spatial human interface (SHI) is a relatively new system that enables us to facilitate human activity in a working environment. The SHI stores human activity data as knowledge and activity history of human into the spatial memory in a working environment as three-dimensional space where one acts, and loads them with the spatial-knowledge-tags (SKT) by supporting the enhancement of human activity. To realize this, the SHI purpose is to construct a new relationship among human and distributed networks computers and sensors that is based on intuitive and simultaneous interactions. In this paper, the specified functions of SKT and the realization method of SKT are explained. The experimental results using SKT are shown.

Describing human-object interaction in Intelligent Space

This paper presents an observation system of human-object interaction in the Intelligent Space (iSpace). Object information is necessary to describe events and human activities which happen in environments. Especially, names, colors, size and shapes of objects can be described manually because we can consider that the information will not change. On the other hand, information such as locations of objects, frequency of use of the objects, the users and motion patterns while using the objects can not be described manually because they depend on individuals and contexts when the objects are used. Therefore, we decided to obtain these kinds of object information through observation of human-object interaction. We show an improvement of the observation system and experimental results to verify the system.

Hand Force Feedback System to Recognize Surrounding Objects for Safe Walking

This paper presents a user-friendly hand force feedback system to recognize surrounding obstacles around the elderly to making walking safer. The system is implemented on a joystick mounted on a walker. The user is able to recognize the surrounding spatial information from the repulsive force generated as feedback on the joystick. The system is based on the generation of a virtual potential field that corresponds to the distance and direction to the obstacle is employed. Through the experimental results, it is found that the practice time of the user to learn basic operation of the system is sufficiently short. Furthermore, the user feels the sense of security while recognizing the surrounding information through the hand force feedback.

Ethologically inspired human-robot interaction interfaces

This paper presents human-robot interaction interfaces based on ethological studies. An ethological test procedure was modeled with the application of a fuzzy rule interpolation based fuzzy automaton. This fuzzy automaton was loaded with rules formed from the extracted ethological knowledge. Using the behaviours supplied by the fuzzy automaton as conclusions, different interfaces can be defined for the incarnation of the model. The ethological test procedure and its modeling technique based on the fuzzy automaton will be shortly introduced in the paper, and then the various human-robot interfaces based on the former will be presented. These include interfaces of simulated environments and also interfaces as real robot hardware with their supplemental devices (sensors, cameras, etc.).

Interaction between a user and a smart electric wheelchair in Intelligent Space

This paper presents interaction between a user and a smart electric wheelchair. We proposed a personal mobility tool (PMT) which integrates mobile robot navigation with intuitive and non-continuous input from a user. An input interface to enable a user to specify a direction in which he/she wants to go is proposed. Also, to help a user interpret robot behaviors, an output interface to realize informative communication between a user and PMT. In this paper, we introduce a vibrotactile interface to present environmental information from a smart wheelchair to the user. We conducted experiments to study the possibility of the input interface and the output vibrotactile interface. Experimental results of the input interface show the interface can be used by users even if they had not used it before. In the experiments for the vibrotactile interface, users try to detect distance and orientation of obstacles from vibration stimuli. Through the experiments, we found that users could not detect exact orientation of obstacles, but detect a direction of the obstacle movement.

Observation system of human-object relations in Intelligent Space

In this paper, intelligent space based human-object relations observation system is proposed and constructed. Intelligent Space is the environment that has distributed sensors for observing and actuators for acting in the space, in order to provide various services to human. In addition, the verification experiments of proposed system are done and the efficiency of this system is discussed.

An approach to path planning and real-time redundancy control for human-robot collaboration

This paper presents a control system for redundant robot manipulators that handles the path planning and redundancy control in two separate loops. The goal is to simplify industrial programming of redundant robots, by decomosing it to a familiar path planning loop, and an autonomous redundant control loop. The familiar path planning is done using an industrial robots native control system, which is already known to the operator. An external feedback loop acts as a secondary task control loop so that the redundancy in the robot is used automatically. The secondary task control is expanded from the null space projection method to a method where a parallel space to task space is modeled in joint space. The system was implemented and experimentally verified on a NACHI MR20 7-axes industrial robot with AX20 Controller. The secondary task in the experiments was an obstacle avoidance task that was tested in unknown dynamic and static environments.

Correspondence relationships between vibrotactile stimuli and tactile sensations determined by semantic differential

We investigated the correspondence relationship between vibrotactile stimuli and tactile mental imagery using a vibrotactile glove proposed in a previous study as an interface for vibrotactile stimuli [1]. The mental impressions of the vibrotactile stimuli obtained by human subjects were measured by semantic differential. Analysis of variance, multiple comparisons, and factor analyses were used to extract and evaluate the distinctive imageries induced by passive touch based on the answers given to questions the subjects were asked. We also discuss the potential of the glove to produce the five fundamental sensations of fine roughness, macro roughness, hardness, warmness, and friction.

Spatial Memory for Augmented Personal Working Environments

Augmented Personal Working Environments (APWEs) are 3D environments in which the physical surroundings of the user are overlaid with representations of a virtual reality. With the rapid technological evolution of personal informatics devices as well as a growing demand for more comfortable and efficient working environments, the partial virtualization of resources used in our everyday work settings is expected to gradually become inevitable. Irrespective of whether someone is working in an office environment or in industrial settings, this trend in virtualization is expected to lead to more collaborative working environments in which the available resources and the interfaces for dealing with those resources can be both physical and virtual in nature. SpatialMemory, which is a memory system embedded in 3-dimensional physical reality, may without doubt be a central subsystem of future APWEs. In this paper, our goal is to contribute to the development of a theoretical background for Spatial Memory from a cognitive infocommunications perspective, and to outline the future research directions of Spatial Memory in APWEs based on some key applications.

Building a map including moving objects for mobile robot navigation in living environments

This paper presents a method for building a map of a living environment, which includes the movement of moving objects, intended for mobile robot navigation. If a robot can generate a path to move to a destination by considering the working area of humans, the robot can avoid crossing those areas. Then, it can be expected that the robot will reach the destination efficiently and peoples activities will not be hindered. We present a method for building a map that represents both static and moving objects.