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For example, when sighted scholars study mathematics and physics etcetera, they need to access visual information, e.g., graphs and pictures. Furthermore, sighted people can express their own ideas and opinions visually. On the other hand, blind people can access visual information if it is expressed tactilely, but find it difficult to express their ideas and opinions visually. We are therefore developing a computer-aided system enabling blind people to draw their own figures on their own. This system consists of a matrix braille display to edit computer line drawings. The matrix braille display enables the blind to feel a tactile graphic during editing. After explaining two input methods for elementary plane shapes, we discuss two methods for scrolling tactile graphics to make the matrix braille display large enough to show tactile graphics in sufficient detail. We then show experimental results for using input and scrolling, and conclude with discussion on the usability of input and scrolling.

This manuscript describes a robot interaction for the driving assistance system of an Ultra-Compact Electric Vehicle (UCEV). Fun-to-drive and safety are important for improving the commercial value of UCEV. To improve fun-to-drive and safety, the improvement of the driving skills is important. However, the driving assistance system of an ordinary vehicle only considers the objective driving evaluation. Therefore, we propose an interactive driving assistance system that considers the relation between the subjective as well as the objective driving evaluation. Furthermore, we install a communicating robot within a UCEV to interact with human beings in real time. As a first step, we propose a driving evaluation system by applying a simplified fuzzy inference, and an interaction timing estimation method by applying a spiking neural network. Through an off-line simulation experiment, we verify the effectiveness of our proposal that is able to generate a robot utterances content as well as estimate reasonable timing.

In this study, we propose and develop a wireless teleoperation system for mobile robots using a leaky coaxial cable (LCX) with a wireless communication infrastructure. In closed spaces resulting from disasters, some problems have been reported, such as cable entanglement, disconnection of wired communications, and problems with teleoperations (e.g., unstable communication quality for wireless communications). In this paper, we propose a communication infrastructure system for teleoperation of a mobile robot using LCXs as a communication infrastructure that considers the above issues. In addition, the communication quality was measured for the operability of the mobile robot by constructing an IEEE 802.11b/g/n network using an LCX, and the effectiveness of the proposed system in an actual environment was confirmed. In the evaluation of the communication quality, bandwidth compression throughput values and packet jitter were measured as evaluation items at the packet level to objectively consider the teleoperation controllability.

We here propose a three-dimensional shape presentation system using linear actuators which can control the displacement of a rod to a precision of 0.1 mm. We assume that this system will be used as a device to present topographical/shape information to people with visual impairments. For this study, we produced a prototype system equipped with precision linear actuators, and conducted experiments to evaluate the capabilities of the system.

This investigation reports the physical characteristics of electrorheological (ER) gels, which are a type of functional material having controlled surface friction. We previously developed slip clutches using ER gels sandwiched between electrodes, and verified their responses and controllability. We newly report the temperature and shear rate characteristics of ER gel in this study because the input and output electrodes of the clutch continuously slip past each other. While the temperature of ER gels increased when energized, the shear stress hardly changed. Instead, wearing and adaptation to the electrode affect the property. The shear rate hardly affected the shear stress in the high-shear-rate region. Conversely, the shear stress depended on the shear rate in the lower region.