Yoshiro Imai

Mobile phone-enhanced user interface of remote monitoring system

An information server has been developed to work as the kernel of remote monitoring system. Web, mail, and database facilities are integrated in the server function. The picture information is obtained from the network camera, accumulated in the server, and distributed to its clients according to their requests. In addition to the remote monitoring function, our server can provide a service for household appliance control. As a GUI client, we have utilized some kinds of cellular phones, and CLDC-based Java programming has been employed to realize the function of clients. For the sake of enhancement of our monitoring function, change from an acquisition picture to another can be analyzed through simple image processing. A service of urgent connection between clients and server is also adopted based on the result of image processing. We introduce an outline of our monitoring system and the contents of its various services, and then explain the detail of Java application which operates on our client devices such as mobile phones.

Development and a brief evaluation of a web-based surveillance system for cellular phones and other mobile computing clients

A surveillance system is designed and implemented with network cameras, an integrated Web/mail server, mobile computing devices as GUI, and remote control devices. It can obtain JPEG images from network cameras, process them, and accumulate them into its database. It can also receive requests from clients, analyze them, and perform services of remote monitoring and/or controlling. Image processing function is built in our system and useful for objectpsilas motion detection. Camera homing and emergency contact for cellular phone can be realized with our surveillance system and its image processing facility. Additionally, a remote controlling function is available to switch electric power of appliances on/off. And a brief evaluation of our system is also reported in this paper.

A Mobile Phone-Enhanced Remote Surveillance System with Electric Power Appliance Control and Network Camera Homing

We have developed an remote surveillance system, which is organized with an integrated web/mail server, network cameras, remote control devices and web-based clients. Some kinds of devices can be used as our clients including, for example, high-performance mobile phone, which are equipped with Java virtual machine and web-browsing facility. Our integrated server is designed to play intensive roles of web and e-mail services. It can obtain JPEG images from network cameras, process them, and accumulate them into its database. It can also receive some types of requests from clients, analyze them and perform several kinds of services such as monitoring, controlling and so on. Almost all software of our surveillance system is written in Java programming language, because of easy and powerful description of GUI as well as network programming. With enhanced facilities for mobile phone, our system has been available for many applications.

Application of a visual computer simulator into collaborative learning

A visual simulator has been developed for understanding computer structure and behavior. It is written in the Java programming language, downloaded from a Web server, and executed on major browsers. It has been designed to illustrate how a computer works visually and run not only as a Java stand-alone application but also as a Java applet. Our visual simulator reads program files written in an assembly language, executes them in step-by-step manner as well as in automatic (i.e., continuous) manner and demonstrates how those programs are processed graphically by computer. In order to improve functionality of simulator, some modules have been newly added, which are designed to perform, for example, online message service, guideline display and built-in e-mail handler. In this paper, new facilities of our simulator mainly explained. They can make its user interface improved and provide communication support between teacher and students for the sake of distance education

Collaborative design and its evaluation through Kansei engineering approach

This paper presents a proposal to reconstruct some specific towns which were attacked and destroyed by Huge Tsunami, for example, in Tohoku region of Japan on the 11th of March, 2011. A collaborative approach has been employed to provide some trial proposal to reconstruct such damaged towns by means of Internet Community as follows. (1) Providing a proposal and pictures to reconstruct, especially offering visual design concept of living space for slope topography through social network system as an example of Internet Community; (2) consulting and discussing the above proposal and pictures among specific Internet Community with analysis by Kansei engineering; and (3) improving an original proposal into more efficient and flexible one. Suitable methods for adjustment are sometimes necessary to avoid occurrence of conflicts from many requests. Kansei Engineering may consolidate several kinds of requests, translate their expressions into set of numerical values(namely vectorize) and reduce conflicts of request into stable adjustment (namely, “not drastic” reformation). The paper explains in detail the above approach for practical collaboration for design of Living Space for Slope Topography and adjustment scheme by means of Kansei engineering approach. It also mentions some senario to brush up the proposal by means of the above collaborative approach and some problems to be resolved to make it more fruitful.

A Trial Design of e-Healthcare Management Scheme with IC-Based Student ID Card, Automatic Health Examination System and Campus Information Network

A Health Education Support System has been being developed for Students and university staffs of Kagawa University. The system includes an IC card reader(writer), several types of physical measuring devices (height meter, weight meter, blood pressure monitor, etc. for health examination), a special-purpose PC, distributed information servers and campus network environment. We have designed our prototype of a Health Education Support System as follows; Students and/or university staffs can utilize the above system for their health education and/or healthcare whenever they want anywhere in university. They can use IC-based ID cards for user authentication, operate the physical measuring devices very much simply, and maintain their physical data periodically. Measured data can be obtained at any point of university by means of measuring devices connected with the system on-line, transferred through campus network environment, and finally cumulated into a specific database of secured information servers. We have carried out some experiments to design our system and checked behaviour of each subsystem in order to evaluate whether such a system satisfy our requirements to build facilities to support health education described above. In this paper, we will introduce our design concepts of a Health Education Support System, illustrate some experimental results and discuss perspective problems as our summaries.

Recycling Resource of Furnitures for Reproductive Design with Support of Internet Community: A Case Study of Resource and Knowledge Discovery Using Social Networks

Nowadays, Ecology and/or Recycling are one of very important keywords to improve our daily lives efficiently and comfortably. Some products have been not-used by owners but they have still now been available. In such a case, Resource and Knowledge Recovery are very much useful at the viewpoint of Ecology and Recycling. We have tried to demonstrate how to recover some resource of furniture in order to achieve recycling and reproducing. We have utilized social networks based on Internet to perform information sharing and exchanging. This time, our resources are currently not-used furnitures kindly provided from some company which has stored several mounts of them. By means of social network based on Internet, target resources can be found and selected into the next recycle process. And then discussion how to utilize such resources are carried out for redesign and reproduction with help of professional viewpoint. Someone, who is interesting in such resources, do redesign and reproduce new products for the sake of recycling and/or resource recovery. This paper describes a case study of recycling resource of furnitures into reproductive design as a sample of Resource and Knowledge Discovery Using Social Networks based on Internet.

An Enhanced Application Gateway for some Web services to Personal Mobile Systems

A strategy and some practical examples are proposed to enhance functionally an application gateway located between clients and some kinds of servers and to utilize it for multiple purposes in order to take advantages on some Web services and communication and/or computation between clients and servers. In such an enhanced application gateway, some suitable interfaces can be selected, offered for each request from client, and an effective communication method between client and target server can be also provided according to request from client. And some practical examples are demonstrated, such as remote monitoring system and e-mail handling system. With our proposed style of enhancing application gateway, an integration of Web function and other special-purpose facilities can be effectively realized as one high-performance application gateway. With our enhanced application gateway, therefore, several kinds of clients utilizing mobile devices will be able to enjoy such efficient environment of some Web services for communication, data handling, and/or specific computation

Evaluation for distance learning scheme on distributed multiple server system

A distributed multiple server system is designed and implemented with Web-DB based services for distance learning as well as emergency communication. The system has employed multiple servers located in a distributed campus network environment. Each server of the system has multi-core processors. With so-called “server virtualization” technology, some programs are executed in parallel (on the virtual servers) so that such a system can efficiently perform several functions. For example, two or more application services can be performed simultaneously as “cloud services” on the whole system. The system can provide distance learning scheme for educational tool, at the same time it can also support Web-based surveillance facilities for emergency contact. With qualitative and quantitative approach, trial evaluation of system has been performed in some classrooms of distributed campus. And users can obtain some good results from the above evaluation.

A Scheme of Resource Discovery in Reproductive Design Education: Trial Evaluation of SNS-contributed Design Education

Design education is one of the most creative topics and themes in Higher Educations and Trainings. Students who are related to some kinds of design education course are requested to learn not only knowledge but also techniques. The former is necessary to design some objects, while the latter are essential to utilize tools as well as equipments. It is important to provide combination of knowledge (= what is) and techniques (= how to) in efficient and effective ways. One of the most attractive approaches to design in Ecological and/or Recycling methods is to utilize and discover reproductive tools and reusable resources. It is a good way to create some reproductive objects. Some furnitures, for example, are considered to be worth enough to be reused and reproduced in such recycling methods. This paper focuses how to utilized recycling resources and to obtain useful knowledge for design education. And it also presents a practical scheme to utilize Resources, Knowledge and Techniques for Design Education in order to retrieve and discover in the network environment. The paper challenges to visualize practical scheme for design process by means of comparison between usual steps in the normal design education and special steps using Internet and network community. And it summaries to be important for design education to visualize scheme for resources and knowledge discovery through network community such as some kinds of social network.