Toshio Asano

Media synchronization control with prediction in a remote haptic calligraphy system

This paper presents a remote haptic calligraphy systemwhich can control a remote haptic interface device with another haptic interface device. In the system, a teacher can instruct a student at a remote location how to use a calligraphy brush while conveying the sense of force through a network. We also present media synchronization control with prediction in order to maintain a high quality of haptic transmission. Under the control, network delay jitter is absorbed by buffering, and the positional information is output by prediction if the information is lost or arrives significantly late. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the control by subjective assessment.

Surveys of exhibition planners and visitors about a distributed haptic museum

This paper presents the results of surveys of exhibition planners and visitors about our distributed haptic museum, which is a distributed virtual museum with touchable exhibits. We visited 15 museums and talked with 23 exhibition planners such as curators and researchers in various types of museums and art galleries after explaining our system and its exhibits. In addition, a questionnaire was given to 75 students acting as visitors. The students experienced our system after a similar presentation to the one given to the exhibition planners. We studied the availability and directionality of the distributed haptic museum based on these discussions and questionnaire results in terms of the concept, haptic interface device, usage, contents, and so on.

Group Synchronization Control in a Remote Haptic Drawing System

In this paper, we enhance group (or inter-destination) synchronization control, which adjusts the output timing among multiple destinations, for a remote drawing system using haptic media. Under the control, an instructor and a learner can draw figures while watching the identical virtual space. By subjective assessment, we demonstrate that Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of the instructor can be improved greatly at the expense of slight deterioration in MOS of the learner. Also, we show that MOS of the learner can be improved by reducing the spring constant used in calculating the reaction force.

Adaptive display control of exhibits in a distributed haptic museum

This work proposes an adaptive display control scheme for touchable exhibits in a distributed haptic museum in order to improve the output quality of haptic media as well as audio and visual media. The proposed scheme carries out LoD (level of detail) control of exhibited objects and proactive transfer control of information files. The LoD control of objects dynamically changes the granularity of object display according to the network load, CPU processing load, and importance of an object, which is determined by the distance, direction, etc. from a users viewpoint to the object. The proactive transfer control of information files transmits the objects haptic information (e.g., weight and form), visual information (e.g., color and pattern), and explanatory information (e.g., voice, video, and text) from a server to clients in advance according to the file size, network load, and CPU processing load. A method of implementing the scheme is discussed in the paper.

Interactive Haptic Transmission for Remote Control Systems

In this paper, we propose a remote control system which controls a haptic interface device with another remote haptic interface device. Haptic feeling can be transmitted by the system. Applications of the system are a remote calligraphy system, a remote drawing instruction system, a remote medical operation system, and so on. The paper deals with the remote drawing instruction system by which an instructor trains a learner how to draw pictures or figures while conveying the sense of force through the Internet. In order to clarify what kinds of control are needed in the system, we examine the influences of network delay, delay jitter and packet loss on the output quality of haptic media by subjective assessment of drawing figures

A remote haptic painting lesson system

This paper deals with a remote haptic painting lesson system by which a teacher trains a student how to paint pictures or figures while conveying the sense of force interactively through a network. In the system, we introduce media synchronization control in order to achieve a high quality of haptic transmission. We make a quality comparison of four media synchronization schemes (Virtual-Time Rendering (VTR), VTR with prediction, fixed buffering with prediction, and Skipping) by subjective assessment.

A proactive file transfer scheme in a distributed haptic museum

This paper illustrates the effectiveness of a proactive file transfer scheme for adaptive display control in a distributed haptic museum with touchable exhibits, which is an application using haptic, audio and visual media. The proactive file transfer scheme dynamically changes the time to request the information files according to the network load in order to decrease the response time and to improve the media output quality. In this paper, we propose an estimation method which uses a part of information files as probe packets to estimate the network load. By experiment, we make a performance comparison among three schemes including the proactive file transfer scheme. Experimental results show that the proactive file transfer scheme with the proposed estimation method has smaller average switch times for display of an exhibited object than the other schemes.

Influence of network latency in a remote control system using haptic media

This paper deals with a remote control system which controls a haptic interface device with another remote haptic interface device. Applications of the system include a remote drawing instruction system, a remote calligraphy system and a remote medical operation system. This paper examines the influence of network latency on the output quality of haptic media by subjective assessment in the remote drawing instruction system. As a result, we show that the instructor has smaller Mean Opinion Score (MOS) values than the learner, and the MOS value can be estimated with high accuracy from the summation of the network latency from an instructors terminal to a learners terminal and that in the opposite direction.

Modeling and trajectory control of free-flying robot with flexible arms

Abstract This paper is concerned with modeling and control of the free-flying robot(FFR) with flexible arms. The distributed parameter model is obtained by using the Lagrange method and the Hamiltons principle taking account of the translational momentum conservation law. The relation of a dynamical non-holonomic constraint and an elastic oscillation is investigated by using infinite dimensional systems. On the basis of the result the tracking control problem is considered and the asymptotic stability of the sensor feedback control scheme is discussed. A numerical simulation result is represented to confirm the discussion.