Yasunari Fujimoto

Evaluation of Mental Stress by Analyzing Accelerated Plethysmogram Applied Chaos Theory and Examination of Welfare Space Installed User's Vital Sign

Abstract Welfare environment is considered special care such as support to stand up, sit up, walk, take a medicine, etc. Therefore, it is usefulness that the welfare environment support customer by service robot and consider its mind. A analyze brain waves is a kind of mind understanding. However, big equipment is needed for accuracy. In this paper, authors research a possibility of diagnosis of stress by accelerated plethysmogram applied the criterion which combine two evaluation based on chaos theory; trajectory parallel measure method and size of neighborhood space in chaos attractor. And, it calculates time-series data of accelerated plethysmogram measured from forty-tester using proposed evaluations. The authors examine the result of its application to diagnose of stress. Finally, the authors examine that customers vital information is usefulness to control a service robot and an environment of room based on an ambient Intelligence.

Daily support system for care prevention by using interaction monitoring robot

Recently, the number of elderly people increases in Japan, and the need of caring elderly people is also increase. Lack of exercise and falling down are the cause of making elderly people need care. For prevention of the situation above, the authors propose daily support system for elderly people using an interaction monitoring robot. Daily support system use the robot to implement both exercise support function and fall down sensing function. Exercise support function includes an interaction module which is for encouraging person exercise by action and utterance. Fall down sensing function use a monitoring module to detect human motion and tell user who fells down. This interaction monitoring robot has both interaction module and monitoring module. The authors develop both synchronous action function and instruction action function for the interaction module, and human motion recognition function for the monitoring module. The authors evaluated users stress of experiment of exercise support function.

Physiological Responses on Greeting with Robot under Difference of Culture

In this study, authors suggested the system which considered difference of culture through the language and gesture movement in the interaction with a robot when user greets. In the interaction, verbal and nonverbal information are important to do natural communication. Authors focused on not only languages but also gesture movement which varies from cultures. It is necessary for even communication between a human and a robot to take in the difference of culture. Authors’ experiment shows that whether this greeting difference leads to changes or not in the human biological signal. The human biological signals are estimated by pulse wave obtained from a finger and brain blood flow measured by NIRS. The result is that biological signals will be changed when the reaction of languages and gestures changed.

Attendant robot for elderly service using sensor network system

The authors developed an Attendant Robot system for the elderly. The robot system is used to prevent user from being at a loss. The system uses ZigBee-3D acceleration sensor and Kinect sensor. Attendant Robot mounts the ZigBee access point, and the ZigBee accelerometer tag is attached to users. The ZigBee access point knows that user comes near to Attendant Robot by finding the tag. This tag has a unique ID, so Attendant Robot reacts to correlative ID only. Kinect sensor detects people who stand in front of the Attendant Robot. This system recognizes user by using function of Kinect and ZigBee sensor. Attendant Robot navigates user using this system. In this paper, the authors set up the proposed system and performed experiment.

Chaos Information Criteria to Detect High-pressure Gas Leak in Petroleum Refining Plant

In a petroleum refining plant, the high-pressure gas leaks resulting from equipment failures may lead to disasters. To minimize these disasters, technology for the early detection of leak sound is indispensable. We have employed chaos theory to identify these dominant sounds, and have already reported these results in papers listed in reference. However, the leak sound is not always more regular than the background noise depending on equipments or weather conditions. In order to detect the high-pressure gas leak sound, it is necessary to estimate the steady state range quantitatively using chaos theory from the background noise. Based on the concept, we describe chaos information criteria for the leak sound detection algorithm. Applying the chaos information criteria to characterize the measured sound data, we conducted the leak sound detection experiment by leaking steam artificially using a silencer nozzle near the high-pressure gas unit in Idemitsu Kosan Chiba Refinery

An Effectiveness of Model-Based Development with User Model in Consideration of Human

In this paper, we proved an effectiveness of a model-based development method with user model which can operate a product as an agency of human in the model-based simulation. In this method, the user model is generated on the basis of the user profile which is defined to clarify the features of the product’s user. This method is effective to evaluate the products which is used by various users with different features, and is also effective to evaluate the products with the risks of damaging the human. And this method does not require any hardware sample production for evaluation. In order to investigate the effectiveness of this method by comparing the results between the simulations and the experiments, we applied this method to the development of an approach function and an emergency stop function of a service robot.

Information community system using pass-by wireless communication on smartphone

We developed an information community system by applying a user model-based application for supporting daily life. Our information community system is designed to provide appropriate services to users depending on their needs; thus, we applied a user model-based application, which can help select and filter user information, to our system for providing appropriate services to users. For achieving the design goal, we first collected motion logs. We collected the motion data from acceleration sensors that are carried by users for creating motion logs. Life logs can then be created from these motion logs. We discuss different service modes of our information community system. The research shows how to determine different user models from motion data, and apply these models and log data to support not only individuals but also families and communities. Especially for the community, we develop three applications. These are the application using gesture recognition, the application using area recognition, and the application using pass-by wireless communication.

A Model-Based System Development of a Walking Support Wheelchair Robot

This paper proposes a model-based development method with user model to develop functions of service robots, in consideration of user conditions. The user model in this paper is an independent model, which cooperates with device models and control models, and then it can behave on behalf of actual human, in simulation environments. Therefore, the user model is effective for developing functions of a product which has some risks to hurt human. The authors have been developing functions of electric wheelchair to support persons with gait disturbance. The authors applied this method to the improvement of a rehabilitation assistance function and a development of the safety drive assistance function on the electric wheelchair, for evaluating the functions in design phase, without risk to hurt subjects. As one of the safety drive functions, the authors implemented a function to stop automatically at emergency. And, for the improvement of the rehabilitation assistance function, the authors implemented a sub-function to approach the user.

An effectiveness of model-based development with user model in developing a wheelchair robot with an ability of telepresence

This paper shows an effectiveness of the model-based development with a user model. The user model which we propose is effective for designing a product, because the user model indicates the requirements for product. And the user model is effective also for evaluating the product, because the user model behaves as an agency of the actual user in the simulation environment. Therefore, the user model is efficient for developing a product which involves some risks damaging user, and is efficient also for developing the product which is used by different types of users, because as a behalf of each user, the user model can evaluate the product. In order to prove the effectiveness of this method, we applied this method to a development of a wheelchair robot with an ability of telepresence.

Brain Monitoring to Detect Nationality Difference Induced by Robot Gesture

This paper reports an experimental study to confirm whether robot’s gesture can induce country-by-country different response in human observers according to their nationalities. Robot greeting actions in Japanese, Chinese, and French styles were mimicked using the communication robot ApriPoco. Brain activity in the cortex area associated with a mirror neuron was investigated by the near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to evaluate the country-by-country difference objectively. As a result, it was confirmed that nationality difference between Japanese and Chinese participants appeared in means of the sum of cerebral blood flow change (SBC) in a primary motor cortex (M1) and Brodmann area 44 (BA44). Moreover, it was shown that robot gesture enhanced the observer’s SBC in case of Japanese participants who watches the mother language-style greeting and Chinese participants’ SBC were emphasized by greeting gesture in above mentioned three types of language styles.