Shinobu Nakagawa

Design and control of electromyogram prosthetic hand with high grasping force

This paper presents the design concept of a novel electromyogram prosthetic hand, which adopts a grasping strategy consisting of thumb opposition with high grasping force and finger extension with non-backdrivability. This grasping strategy contributes to mass saving and high grasping force. Each finger has 1 degree of freedom (DOF) for flexion/extension, and the thumb has 2 DOF for opposition and flexion/extension. The design includes a passive extension mechanism to keep contact with the grasped object and a passive flexion mechanism to avoid collision between the fingers and the environment. The prosthetic hand also has 2 DOF for wrist motion. All motors and control circuitry are installed in the hand frame. The outside aspect and the size are similar to those of a womans hand. The hands mass including artificial skin is 336 g, and the grasping force is 20 N and above. These specifications have been set based on a survey of electric prosthetic hands administered to users and medical experts. The experimental results of hand control measured by a surface electromyogram from an able-bodied subject are also presented.

Haptic Display by a Side-Faced-Type Multi-Fingered Haptic Interface

Abstract The newly developed side-faced-type multi-fingered haptic interface presents three-directional forces at a users five fingertips and allows the user to grasp a small virtual object using his/her multiple fingers. This paper describes the development of a control system to realize a haptic display using the new interface and presents the experimental results of testing the system, which show the great potential of the side-faced-type multi-fingered haptic interface.

Rebo: A remote control with strokes

This paper describes a new remote control operable with stroking its surface. There are lots of remote controls in our houses such as TV remote controls, air conditioner remote controls, and so on. However, when we use a remote control, we need to look at both the fingers and an appliance that we want to control. It is not highly problematic for young people, but elderly people have a difficulty in operating remote controls. It will be comfortable for people to use a remote control without looking at the fingers. In this study, we propose a remote control, Rebo, operable with stroking its surface and apply to a TV interaction system. The developed remote control has three advantages; (1) Familiarity, (2) Function awareness, and (3) Stroke operation. Those enable users to have familiarity with it, to easily notice its functions, and to use it without looking at the fingers. The feature of Rebo in comparison with conventional button-based remote controls is the tolerance for mistakes because it enables unfamiliar users to home electric appliances to use it casually without fear of mistakes and unexpected behavior.

Design and simulation of a side-faced-type multi-fingered haptic interface

This paper presents a new type of multi-fingered haptic interface, which allows for the grasping of small objects and bimanual manipulation in a virtual reality environment. The interface consists of a haptic arm with 6 DOF, which is placed on the side face of the operator and a haptic hand with 15 DOF, which is put on the back of the operators hand. A combination control approach with the PI force control for the haptic hand and a position control for the haptic arm is adopted. The desired hand position and orientation is decided so as to maximize the sum of the hand manipulability index and the penalty function of the interference between human hand and haptic hand. Design and simulation results of the proposed interface are shown.

Interaction Design for a Pet-Like Remote Control

This paper describes a novel remote control operable with stroking its surface. Advantages of the developed remote control are high familiarity and stroke operation. Those enable users to have familiarity with it and to use it without looking at the fingers. We apply it to an interaction system with TV. The proposed system has the tolerance for mistakes in comparison with conventional button-based remote controls because it enables unfamiliar users to home electric appliances to use it casually without fear of mistakes and unexpected behavior.

Side-faced-type Multi-fingered Haptic Interface

This paper presents the design, control, and characteristics of a new type of haptic interface named side-facedtype multi-fingered haptic interface. The proposed side-faced-type multi-fingered haptic interface, consisting of a five-fingered haptic hand and an arm, can present three-directional forces at a user’s five fingertips. By locating the interface on the side of the user’s body, the interface allows the user to grasp a small virtual object using multiple fingers. Further, to realize the haptic display by the interface, a control system has been developed. Finally, several experiments have been carried out to investigate the validity of the developed interface. These results show the great potential of the side-faced-type multi-fingered haptic interface.

Rebo: A Pet-Like Strokable Remote Control

Rebo: A Pet-Like Strokable Remote Control Kazuki Kobayashi∗1, Seiji Yamada∗2,∗3,∗4, Shinobu Nakagawa∗5, and Yasunori Saito∗6 ∗1Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shinshu University, 4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano City 380-8553, Japan E-mail: kby@shinshu-u.ac.jp ∗2National Institute of Informatics, 2-1-2 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda, Tokyo 101-8430, Japan E-mail: seiji@nii.ac.jp ∗3SOKENDAI, Shonan Village, Hayama, Kanagawa 240-0193, Japan ∗4Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 226-8503, Japan ∗5Design Department, Osaka University of Arts, 469 Higashiyama, Kanan-cho, Minami Kawachi-gun, Osaka 585-8555, Japan E-mail: shinobu@osaka-geidai.ac.jp ∗6Faculty of Engineering, Shinshu University, 4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano City 380-8553, Japan E-mail: saitoh@cs.shinshu-u.ac.jp

Experimental investigation on a robot-like remote control with strokes

This paper describes user studies on a novel remote control manipulatable with stroking its surface. There are lots of remote controls in our houses such as remote controls for TV, air conditioner, and so on. However, when we use a remote control, we need to look at both our fingers and an appliance that we would like to control. It may be not significantly problematic for young people, but elderly people have a difficulty in manipulating remote controls with many buttons. We consider it will be comfortable for various people to use a remote control without looking at their fingers and pushing buttons. We also consider a remote control should have robot-like appearance to become a more familiar artifact to users. In this study, we have proposed a robot-like remote control, Rebo, manipulatable only with stroking its surface and apply to an advanced TV system. The developed remote control has three advantages; familiarity, function awareness, and stroke manipulation, in contrast with conventional remote controls with many buttons. These advantages enable users to feel much familiarity by using it, to easily notice its implemented functions, and to use it without looking at the fingers and buttons. In this paper, we focus on experimental investigation for advantages of Rebo. We conducted experiments with participants and the experimental results supported such advantages.