Gait-based person recognition has received an increasing amount of attentions for monitoring and surveillance applications. One of issues in gait recognition is that it is difficult to recognize people with high performance, in case that the resolution of captured images is too low. To deal with this problem, this paper presents SFDEINet, which uses Singed Frame Difference Energy Image (SFDEI) as input images. SFDEI has an advantage of explicit representation of motion of walking people, by changing the size of frame difference. To take the size of frame difference into account, SFDEINet is deigned to have convolution layers in parallel, followed by fusing outputs of each layer. We will show the SFDEINet is more suitable for SFDEI than GEINet in experiments.

In recent years, Personal Mobility Vehicle (PMV) have been attracting much attention as the new future vehicle. In this paper, we propose a new control system which provides automatic driving function or driving support function to PMVs using a small sensor terminal named "Portable". This system enables to add intelligent functions to various PMVs by attaching the Portable. In this paper we introduce two types of intelligent PMVs, standing type mobility and electric wheelchair, and show experimental results in indoor and outdoor environments including a theme park.

This paper proposes distributed sensor systems to construct an informationally structured environment by using LRFs (Laser Range Finders) and active beacons. With the proposed system, a personal mobility can localize its position and automatically move in indoor and outdoor environments. Experiments show that the personal mobility is guided appropriately in various environments, such as the campus of the university, the exhibition booth, and the theme park.

This paper presents an overview of pick and place operations performed by an inflatable robot. The inflatable robotic arm is composed of inflatable links and pneumatic bag actuators. This technology is expected to be applied to service robots working in human daily life, since the robotic arm has many advantages such as lightness, softness and safety. The pick and place tasks are realized by both pressure and visual feedback controls. The usefulness of the robot is demonstrated by several real world experiments.

Over the past decades, 3D jobs (dangerous, dirty, demanding) are expected to be replaced by autonomous robots. At a theme park, surveillance, cleaning, and guiding tasks can be regarded as 3D jobs. This paper aims to develop an autonomous tour guide robot system at a large theme park. One of the characteristics of the tour guide robot we developed is the use of QZSS (quasi-zenith satellite system) and CLAS (centimeter level augmentation service), which realizes the centimeter-level positioning for autonomous service robots. We also implemented autonomous tour-guide system including path planning, collision avoidance, and voice explanation. Experimental results at the theme park showed that QZSS has sufficient localization accuracy for the tour-guide task, and the tour-guide experiment was successfully carried out.

In this study, we aim to quantify care skills in the care technique called "Humanitude". Humanitude has been attracting much attention as a gentle and effective care technique for a dementia patient in recent years. The developed wearable tactile sensor aims to quantify the "touch" skill among the four representative skills in Humanitude, which are gaze, touch, talk, and stand up. In addition, we developed a learning system of Humanitude using AR technology and a real object, which realizes the interaction between a care-giver and a patient and enabled to quantify the "touch" and "gaze" skill.

Sport climbing is one of the sports attracting attention all over the world and expected to become more popular. Therefore, motion measurement and analysis system have been required to improve the performance of players and instruct them. In several researches, the systems on motion measurement and analysis of climbing have been presented. Most of these systems consider only the movement of climbing, and take no thought of the force on holds. However, force information is indispensable to analyze the body motion of players deeply. This paper proposes a new 3D motion and force measurement system for sport climbing that can measure the movement and the force on holds simultaneously. Then, this proposed system enables us to measure and analyze climbing motions geometrically and dynamically. In order to verify the performance of the proposed system, we conducted the experiment in an actual climbing gym. In addition, we analyzed the center of mass of a player and the force on a hold by using the proposed system.

For safe human-robot coexistence, we have developed a near-future perception system named Previewed Reality. In this paper, we propose the latest system "Previewed Reality 2.0", which realizes a quasi-real-time processing. The system consists of an informationally structured environment (ISE), a Microsoft HoloLens, and a dynamic simulator. In an ISE, a number of sensors are embedded, and information such as the position of furniture, objects, humans, and robots, is sensed and stored in a database. Therefore, we can predict the next possible events using a dynamic simulator and synthesize virtual images of what users will see in the near future from their own viewpoint. The virtual images are presented to the user by overlaid on a real scene using augmented reality technology. The proposed system allows a human to avoid collision with a robot by showing possible hazardous situations to the human intuitively in advance.

As an effective way to grasp an object softly and robustly, many soft grippers have been developed and reported. However, it is still difficult to grasp objects that are easily damaged by local contact forces such as fruits. This paper proposes a soft gripper which grasps such easily damaged objects by wrapping around. This approach gives a wide area of contact and reduces local contact forces. Moreover, this gripper is composed of only soft materials and integrally molded. The opening-closing mechanism is realized by using snap-through-buckling. In this paper, we show the design concept and the performance of the first prototype of the gripper.

3D jobs (dangerous, dirty, demanding) are expected to be replaced by autonomous robots. At a theme park, surveillance, cleaning, and guiding tasks can be regarded as 3D jobs. This paper aims to develop an autonomous tour guide robot system and co-experience system at a large theme park. One of the characteristics of the tour guide robot we developed is the use of QZSS (quasi-zenith satellite system) and CLAS (centimeter-level augmentation service), which realizes the centimeter-level positioning for autonomous service robots. On the other hand, co-experience realizes the sharing of experience through the robot utilizing the 5th generation mobile communication system. Experimental results at the theme park showed that the tour-guide experiment was successfully carried out and the co-experience system can provide sharing of the experience of the robot to the user.

This paper proposes a training system for a multimodal comprehensive care methodology for dementia patients named Humanitude. Humanitude has been attracting much attention as an effective care technique for dementia patients. Humanitude consists of four main techniques, namely, eye contact, verbal communication, touch, and standing up, and more than 150 care elements. Learning Humanitude thus requires much time. To train Humanitude effectively, we develop a training systemthat realizes sensing and interaction simultaneously by combining areal entity and augmented reality technology. To imitate the interaction between a patient and a caregiver, we superimpose a three-dimensional CG model of a patient's face onto the head of a soft doll using augmented reality technology. Touch information such as position and pressure is sensed using a whole body wearable tactile sensor. The effectiveness of the proposed training system is evaluated in public lectures.

We focus on environmental informationally structuring that makes the environment around the robot intelligent, not just the robot itself. We have developed a software platform ROS-TMS to realize a service robot that coexists with humans in an informationally structured environment. ROS is currently being developed with a new ROS₂ with significantly changed and improved communication functions and additional internal functions. Therefore, in this research, we develop ROS₂-TMS, which adopts ROS₂ for ROS-TMS. In this research, we first develop and port various modules, such as a control system for a communication robot. Furthermore, in the development of the voice user interface and task scheduler, not only robots, but also operation commands to various devices that work on the user, are managed. And a new cancellation function is added to stop running tasks, with the aim of improving service security.

In this study, we aim to quantify care skills in the dementia care technique called "Humanitude". Humanitude has been attracting much attention as a gentle and effective care technique for a dementia patient in recent years. The developed wearable whole body tactile sensor aims to quantify the "touch" skill among the four representative skills in Humanitude, which are gaze, touch, talk, and stand up. In addition, we conducted a demonstration experiment using a wearable whole body tactile sensor to quantify nursing care by general caregivers and a Humanitude expert.

In this research, we develop a near-future perception system named "Smart Previewed Reality" for humans and robots to coexist safely. This system consists of a smartphone and the management system of informationally structured environment "ROS-TMS". Informationally structured environment is so-called a smart environment, in which various sensors are placed in the space where the robot works, and the information of humans and objects and current and planned robot motion are stored structurally in a database. Therefore, by showing planned robot motion in the database by a smartphone beforehand (Previewed Reality), the user can perceive the near-future robot motion and avoid dangerous situation such as collisions. We develop smartphone applications for Previewed Reality including visualization of robot motion using AR, UI indicators of robot position, and push notification of dangerous situation.