This study introduces injury risk curves for the lumbar spine for use in the risk assessment of low back pain (LBP) caused by manual lifting of heavy loads. LBP has been a longstanding problem among industrial...
This paper presents fabrication and actuation methods for a soft microrobot with a hybrid structure composed of soft microactuators and a rigid supporting body. This hybrid structure enables actuation of the m...
Authors: Tomoki Watanabe, Yoshiyuki Yokoyama and Takeshi Hayakawa
Breast cancer diagnosis has been mostly accomplished through imaging. These methods have great advantages in being able to detect the presence and location of breast cancer. However, it is difficult to disting...
Authors: Satoshi Miura, Hidekazu Ishiuchi, Yuta Shintaku, Victor Parque, Ayako Torisaka and Tomoyuki Miyashita
One of the recommended post-stroke gait rehabilitation treatments is the use of an ankle–foot orthosis. In clinical practice, it is important to adjust the torque of the ankle–foot orthosis assistance to suit ...
Authors: Masataka Yamamoto, Koji Shimatani, Masaki Hasegawa and Yuichi Kurita
This paper reports negative effects on runner’s motions which are supported by an exoskeleton attached to his/her lower limbs. A wearable assistive device has generally been developed to support motions of a w...
Recently, wearable extra robotic limbs that aim to enhance the functionality and capability of human operators as extra arms or fingers have become an active research subject among robotics researchers. Improv...
Authors: Yaonan Zhu, Takayuki Ito, Tadayoshi Aoyama and Yasuhisa Hasegawa
This paper proposes a navigation system of a personal mobility robot in informationally structured and unstructured environments. First, we introduce a group of robots named Portable Go, which are equipped wit...
A long-reach robotic arm is useful for applications such as nuclear plant decommissioning, inspection, and firefighting. However, for such arms, a small external reaction force can result in large loads on pro...
There has been an increasing interest in mobile manipulators that are capable of performing physical work in living spaces worldwide, corresponding to an aging population with declining birth rates with the ex...
Authors: Takashi Yamamoto, Koji Terada, Akiyoshi Ochiai, Fuminori Saito, Yoshiaki Asahara and Kazuto Murase
In this paper, we present a novel method for caging-based grasping of deformable objects. This method enables manipulators to grasp objects simply with geometric constraints by using position control of roboti...
Authors: Dabae Kim, Yusuke Maeda and Shun Komiyama
Generation of stable and realistic haptic feedback during mid-air gesture interactions have recently garnered significant research interest. However, the limitations of the sensing technologies such as unstabl...
Authors: Dennis Babu, Masashi Konyo, Hikaru Nagano, Ryunosuke Hamada and Satoshi Tadokoro
Laparoscopic surgery, which is also called minimally invasive surgery, is a surgical technique that is associated with accelerated post-operative recovery. However, it can only be performed by surgeons possess...
Numerous studies have developed in-pipe locomotive devices to inspect pipes. However, it is difficult to achieve selective locomotion in a branched piping system. In this study, a novel steerable in-pipe locom...
We present a facial wearable robot to support eyelid movement for patients with hemifacial paralysis. People with facial paralysis are not able to blink, which leads to dry eyes and could cause permanent damag...
Authors: Yuta Kozaki, Naoki Matsushiro and Kenji Suzuki
Providing an accurate count of total leukocytes and specific subsets (such as T-cells and B-cells) within small amounts of whole blood is a rather challenging ordeal due to the lack of techniques that enable t...
Authors: Bilal Turan, Taisuke Masuda, Anas Mohd Noor, Koji Horio, Toshiki I. Saito, Yasuyuki Miyata and Fumihito Arai
Flexible manipulators have numerous advantages such as lightweight, high operation speed, and low power consumption. However, they suffer from link vibrations, especially when operated at high speeds followed ...
Authors: Waweru Njeri, Minoru Sasaki and Kojiro Matsushita
Absolute counting of total leukocytes and specific subset (such as T-cells and B-cells) within small amounts of whole blood is difficult due to the lack of techniques that enables separation of leukocytes from...
Authors: Bilal Turan, Taisuke Masuda, Wu Lei, Anas Mohd Noor, Koji Horio, Toshiki I. Saito, Yasuyuki Miyata and Fumihito Arai
In this paper, we propose two gait strategies for a limb mechanism robot, called ASTERISK, to move on narrow spaces. Specifically, we describe two types of locomotion, namely, vertical-body climbing gait and h...
Authors: Kenichi Ohara, Takeshi Toda, Kazuto Kamiyama, Masaru Kojima, Mitsuhiro Horade, Yasushi Mae and Tatsuo Arai
We are developing a robot that can play an outdoor game with children. In realizing such a robot, the person detection and tracking methods play an important role. In this paper, we propose methods for improvi...
Authors: Yuko Nakamori, Yutaka Hiroi and Akinori Ito
An informationally structured environment (ISE) is a key technology for realizing service robots in daily life in the near future. In ISE, the information of the service robot and its surroundings is structure...
This paper focuses on robot picking of objects in warehouses and stores. Objects are often regularly stacked or aligned in specific arrangement patterns to increase storage efficiency. There are typical patter...
Authors: Tadashi Asaoka, Kazuyuki Nagata, Takao Nishi and Ikuo Mizuuchi
Estimating the distance of a target object from a single image is a challenging task since a large variation in the object appearance makes the regression of the distance difficult. In this paper, to tackle su...
The motion of the robot to realize assembly work includes the part where the reuse of the motion adjusted for the real objects is effective and the part where automatic generation in the simulator is suitable....
Authors: Ryo Hanai, Kensuke Harada, Isao Hara and Noriaki Ando
When using a wearable robot, the interaction force applied to the area of contact may cause skin injuries over time. Therefore, validating the contact safety of wearable robots is important for their practical...
Authors: Yuma Sakai, Yasuhiro Akiyama, Yoji Yamada and Shogo Okamoto
This paper describes a hardware-in-the-loop simulation of massive-payload manipulation on orbit using a master–slave teleoperation system. The main problems in teleoperating a space robot arm from the earth to...
Authors: Jaesung Yang, Atsushi Konno, Satoko Abiko and Masaru Uchiyama
This paper addresses a reference gait speed generator for limit-cycle-based bipedal gait of humanoid robots in order to achieve secure and efficient acceleration and deceleration without falling down at respec...
This paper proposes a low-cost infrared (IR) LED system with a novel arrangement that enables the self-localization of an indoor mobile robot. The proposed system uses only low-cost IR LED emitters installed o...
This article reports on a newly designed thermal walker that can walk on a hot horizontal surface without any motor or battery. The walker converts heat energy from the hot surface into mechanical motion by us...
In the current study, we tested a prototype of an isokinetic exercise device for the lower limbs, named the ERIK. The ERIK enables a type of single-limb squat exercise with a translational load on the swing le...
This study presents a novel approach for processing motion data from a six-degree-of-freedom inertial measurement unit (IMU). Trajectory estimation through double integration of acceleration measurements resul...
In recent years, the total number of physical therapists is increasing in Japan. However, it is not sufficient to nurse of patients requiring long-term care. In order to cope with the shortage of manpower, it ...
Authors: Yudai Kitano, Tsutomu Tanzawa and Kazutaka Yokota
Baseball has been enjoyed by many generations and there are many people who play the game. Swing speed increases are generally required to develop ideal batting skill; nevertheless, no study has proposed a sys...
Authors: Teppei Onishi, Kazuhiro Yasuda, Suguru Kawata and Hiroyasu Iwata
In this paper, we aimed to establish a novel method for surface condition measurement for the indoor floor. To measure the surface condition, we proposed wiping motion that to stroke the target surface with chang...
Authors: Koichiro Matsumoto and Kimitoshi Yamazaki
Surpassing the world record in athletic performance requires extensive use of kinematic and dynamic motion analyses to develop novel body usage skills and training methods. Performance beyond the current world...
Authors: Akihiko Murai, Hiroaki Hobara, Satoru Hashizume, Yoshiyuki Kobayashi and Mitsunori Tada
Following publication of the original article [1], the authors reported that one of the authors’ name is spelled incorrectly. In this Correction the incorrect and correct author name are shown. The original pu...
Authors: Abu Ubaidah Shamsudin, Kazunori Ohno, Ryunosuke Hamada, Shotaro Kojima, Thomas Westfechtel, Takahiro Suzuki, Yoshito Okada, Satoshi Tadokoro, Jun Fujita and Hisanori Amano
For household humanoid robots, reaching as much workspace as possible with their hands is an important issue because the locations of target objects may range from the floor to above the robot’s head. At the s...
Authors: Satoki Tsuichihara, Yuya Hakamata, Gustavo Alfonso Garcia Ricardez, Jun Takamatsu and Tsukasa Ogasawara
The objective of this study was to achieve simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) of firefighter robots for petrochemical complexes. Consistency of the SLAM map is important because human operators compa...
Authors: Abu Ubaidah Shamsudin, Kazunori Ohno, Ryunosuke Hamada, Shotaro Kojima, Thomas Westfechtel, Takahiro Suzuki, Yoshito Okada, Satoshi Tadokoro, Jun Fujita and Hisanori Amano
A visual assistance system has become attractive as a technique to improve the efficiency and stability of remote control. While an operator controls a working robot, another autonomous monitoring robot evalua...
Authors: Shota Samejima, Khusniddin Fozilov and Kosuke Sekiyama
Laparoscopic surgery is a minimally invasive surgery that accelerates postoperative recovery, but it can only be performed by surgeons with advanced surgical skills. One of the main difficulties in laparoscopi...
This paper presents an occlusion-handling method for a target-tracking robot with a stereo camera. One of the main challenges with the robot is to continue tracking when the illumination changes and occlusion ...
Authors: Yuzuka Isobe, Gakuto Masuyama and Kazunori Umeda
In recent years, there has been great interest in the possibility of using artificial limbs as an extension of the human body as well as replacement of lost limbs. In this paper, we develop a sixth finger syst...
How to improve task performance and how to control a robot in extreme environments when just a few sensors can be used to obtain environmental information are two of the problems for disaster response robots (...
Authors: Kui Chen, Mitsuhiro Kamezaki, Takahiro Katano, Taisei Kaneko, Kohga Azuma, Tatsuzo Ishida, Masatoshi Seki, Ken Ichiryu and Shigeki Sugano
This paper describes a method to pick up a folded cloth product by a single-armed robot. We focus on a problem on picking up a folded cloth, and organize tasks to attack it. Then, we propose methods of grasp p...
Authors: Yusuke Moriya, Daisuke Tanaka, Kimitoshi Yamazaki and Keisuke Takeshita
The control method based on the time-state control form has been proposed to stabilize the chained system, which is a canonical-form nonlinear system. In this study, the control method is used for controlling ...
In this paper, a concept of frame-by-frame intermittent tracking to achieve motion-blur-free and high-brightness images when video shooting fast moving scenes is proposed. In our tracking concept, two control ...
Odometry is widely used to localize wheeled and tracked vehicles because of its simplicity and continuity. Odometric calculations integrate the wheel or track’s rotation speed. The accuracy of position thus ca...
Authors: Genki Yamauchi, Keiji Nagatani, Takeshi Hashimoto and Kenichi Fujino
Weight-shift training during stroke rehabilitation requires patient effort, potentially causing leg spasticity and anxiety, which disturb motor learning. The purpose of this study was (1) to devise an implicit...
This paper reports an improvement of the particle-excitation flow control valve. The valve that we have designed in previous reports can control air flow, using particle excitation by piezoelectric resonance, ...
Authors: Daisuke Hirooka, Tomomi Yamaguchi, Naomichi Furushiro, Koichi Suzumori and Takefumi Kanda
A human detection and tracking method using a stereo camera is presented in this paper. Two human detection methods are independently implemented, and the results are combined to reduce misdetection and nondet...
Authors: Gakuto Masuyama, Takehiro Kawashita and Kazunori Umeda
Surface wettability is one of most important indexes for understanding the interfacial characteristics between a solid surface and a liquid, especially such physico-chemical properties as hydrophilicity and wa...
Authors: Nobuyuki Tanaka, Yoshihide Haruzono, Hiromitsu Nasu, Yuki Nakanishi, Junko Takahara, Akane Awazu and Yo Tanaka
