Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author  

With the continuous advancement of robot teleoperation technology, shared
control is used to reduce the physical and mental load of the operator in
teleoperation system. This paper proposes an alternating shared control
framework for object grasping that considers both operator's preferences
through their manual manipulation and the constraints of the follower robot.
The switching between manual mode and automatic mode enables the operator to
intervene the task according to their wishes. The generation of the grasping
pose takes into account the current state of the operator's hand pose, as well
as the manipulability of the robot. The object grasping experiment indicates
that the use of the proposed grasping pose selection strategy leads to smoother
follower movements when switching from manual mode to automatic mode.

arXiv

Other Link： http://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.16523v1

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SPRINGERNATURE  

Wearable body weight support systems can assist individuals with mobility impairments in performing daily living activities with greater ease and independence. However, existing systems have limitations in terms of balancing their strength, compact size, interaction with the ground, and driving. In this paper, we present the High-Strength and Flexible Mechanism (HSFM) designed for body weight support. The HSFM utilizes a coiling truss mechanism to perform flexible transformation between a straight and spiral shape. Its complex linkages create the mechanical constraints of the structure and enhance its stiffness. Additionally, the HSFM achieved a high extension rate, effective wire-driven mechanism, and smooth shift of the grounding point. We provide a detailed description of the HSFM, including the simplest 4-linkage mechanism, its mechanical constraints, and the wire-driven mechanism. Moreover, we conducted parametric analysis and geometric calculation on the link structure. The results justified the mechanical constraints of the HSFM and ensured the high extension rate. Further, its functionality for body weight support was evaluated with the hardware and showed sufficient results in terms of strength, smooth grounding, and wire-driven. This novel mechanism has the potential to develop a wearable body weight support robot enhancing daily living activities such as sit-to-stand transfer and walking.

DOI： 10.1186/s40648-023-00255-x

Web of Science

Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (bulletin of university, research institution)   Publisher：日本ロボット工業会  

CiNii Books

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC  

Low-temperature environment leads to a weakened ability of sludge bio-drying to drive system evaporation and the system's water removal capacity of aeration (sigma F center dot Delta P), significantly reducing water removal rate and consequent decrease of the bio-drying index. The bio-drying system maintains more microorganisms active by inoculating with thermophilic bacteria to produce heat when it reaches above 55 degrees C to enhance the temperature cumulation and sigma F center dot Delta P to remove moisture and shorten the bio-drying time rapidly. The results showed that the percentage of the thermophilic period (T >= 55 degrees C) and hyperthermophile period (T >= 70 degrees C) of the hyperthermophilic pile was 67.16% and 30.14%, respectively. In comparison, only the thermophilic period of 5.48% existed in the conventional pile. The moisture content of the hyperthermophilic pile decreased from 51.23% to 41.52% in 12 days and decreased from 50.25% to 41.35% in 21 days that in the conventional pile. Meanwhile, the hyperthermophilic pile had a faster VS consumption rate and higher bio-drying index than the conventional pile. The microbial community composition showed that the hyperthermophilic pile mainly comprised thermophilic bacteria, such as Thermopolyspora, and hyperthermophilic bacteria, such as Thermus. The full-scale operation in the plants showed that the sludge inoculated with thermophilic bacteria reached the bio-drying requirement within 12 days with a maximum temperature of 94 degrees C, which significantly shortened the time of bio-drying and increased the sludge treatment capacity.

DOI： 10.1080/07373937.2023.2210213

Web of Science

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)  

DOI： 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3271003

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.1109/TMECH.2023.3294255

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3236821

Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

Vision-based tactile sensors have gained extensive attention in the robotics
community. The sensors are highly expected to be capable of extracting contact
information i.e. haptic information during in-hand manipulation. This nature of
tactile sensors makes them a perfect match for haptic feedback applications. In
this paper, we propose a contact force estimation method using the vision-based
tactile sensor DIGIT, and apply it to a position-force teleoperation
architecture for force feedback. The force estimation is done by building a
depth map for DIGIT gel surface deformation measurement and applying a
regression algorithm on estimated depth data and ground truth force data to get
the depth-force relationship. The experiment is performed by constructing a
grasping force feedback system with a haptic device as a leader robot and a
parallel robot gripper as a follower robot, where the DIGIT sensor is attached
to the tip of the robot gripper to estimate the contact force. The preliminary
results show the capability of using the low-cost vision-based sensor for force
feedback applications.

DOI： 10.1109/CBS55922.2023.10115342

Web of Science

arXiv

Other Link： http://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.13007v1

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：MDPI AG  

There is a growing need for robots that can be remotely controlled to perform tasks of one’s own choice. However, the SoA (Sense of Agency: the sense of recognizing that the motion of an observed object is caused by oneself) is reduced because the subject of the robot motion is identified as external due to shared control. To address this issue, we aimed to suppress the decline in SoA by presenting auditory feedback that aims to blur the distinction between self and others. We performed the tracking task in a virtual environment under four different auditory feedback conditions, with varying levels of automation to manipulate the virtual robot gripper. Experimental results showed that the proposed auditory feedback suppressed the decrease in the SoA at a medium level of automation. It is suggested that our proposed auditory feedback could blur the distinction between self and others, and that the operator attributes the subject of the motion of the manipulated object to himself.

DOI： 10.3390/s22249779

Publishing type：Research paper (conference, symposium, etc.)  

Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/iros47612.2022.9982247

Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/iros47612.2022.9981129

Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Due to its high treatment efficiency and environmental friendliness when used to treat organic waste, hyperthermophilic composting (HC) has attracted extensive attention in recent years. However, it is still unclear how HC accelerates the degradation and humification process of organic matter. This study investigated the effects of high temperature and thermophilic bacteria on the degradation and humification of organic matter during HC. In the process of HC and conventional composting (CC), total organic carbon content decreased by 30.76 mg/g and 18.50 mg/g, while humic acid carbon content increased by 2.26 mg/g and 1.41 mg/g, respectively. These results showed that HC accelerated the humification process by enhancing the degradation of organic matter and the production of humic acid compared to CC. Redundancy analysis revealed that the rapid humification process of HC was related to high temperature and thermophilic bacteria. Thermophilic bacteria accelerated the degradation of organic matter in the high temperature stage, and the degradation products provided sufficient substances for the humification reaction in the low temperature stage, thereby accelerating the humification reaction. In conclusion, the coupling effect of high temperature and thermophilic bacteria indirectly accelerated the humification process. This work contributes to understanding the humification mechanism of HC.

DOI： 10.1016/j.psep.2022.08.052

Scopus

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC  

Robotic teleoperation with force feedback has been studied extensively since it was first developed in the 1940 s. Time delay is a common problem of bilateral teleoperation systems. Although many efforts on optimizing the control architectures have been made, there is always a trade-off between transparency and stability for bilateral systems, and the perfect transparency and stability can only be achieved simultaneously in ideal situations. In this letter, we propose a novel approach to compensate for the degraded transparency while using the conventional passivity-based approach to maintain system stability under time-delay. The proposed approach is based on visual feedback and enhances the transparency by displaying different kinds of onomatopoeia according to contact force detected on the slave side. The basic performance is evaluated by conducting a stiffness classification task under constant round trip time delays (0 ms, 500 ms and 1000 ms). The preliminary results indicate that the subjects have higher accuracy for classifying the stiffness of a remote object by using onomatopoeia enhanced force feedback compared with the conventional passivity-based position-force feedback.

DOI： 10.1109/LRA.2020.2972896

Web of Science

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SPRINGERNATURE  

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. Improving the operability of the extra robotic limbs is required for the human operators, an approach for which is to induce robotic embodiment. In this paper, we focus on the update of sense of self-location which is the key aspect of embodiment and contributes to the body representation update, and we elucidate dominant factors which induce the embodiment of an extra robotic thumb (ERT). The experiments are conducted to compare the performance of the reaching task of the ERT under three separately given conditions, of which two are somatosensory feedbacks: (1) tactile and position feedback from the fingertips and (2) tactile and position feedback from the human face, and one is a non-somatosensory feedback: (3) auditory feedback. As a result, we confirmed that the somatosensory feedback from finger tips has a large contribution for the update of sense of self-location.

DOI： 10.1186/s40648-019-0135-0

Web of Science

Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

DOI： 10.1299/jsmemecj.2019.s15101

Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

Research on robotic teleoperation has acquired popularity among robotic researchers around the world. Although, it is reported that using haptic device to provide force information to users improves operability of force constrained tasks, its high cost is considered to be not suitable for ordinary users doing daily manipulation. Our research aiming at developing an intuitive teleoperation interface without actually using force feedback. In order to examine how operators’ sense of embodiment for the teleoperation system changes with or without force feedback, we developed a bilateral teleoperation system with the function to select whether to display the force, and performed a basic experiment. As a result, it is confirmed that the sense of embodiment is weakened during the manipulation without force feedback.

DOI： 10.1299/jsmermd.2019.1a1-r05

J-GLOBAL

J-GLOBAL

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

The ultimate goal of our study is to elucidate dominant factors and feedback information which facilitate embodiment of an extra robotic limb including a robotic thumb. In this research, our trials are to shift body representation and to evaluate how body schema is modified after use of the robotic thumb. As a result, proprioceptive drifts and task performance improved when subjects controlled the robotic thumb without visual confirmation of its posture. And after performing a grasping task execution with the the robotic thumb the modification of body schema is conformed.

Web of Science

Language：Japanese   Publisher：一般社団法人 人工知能学会  

近年，人とロボットのインタラクションに関する研究が多く行われている．ロボットが人と効果的にインタラクションを行うためには，リアルタイムに人の感情を推定し，それに応じた行動をとることが重要であると考えられる．そこで本稿では，画像認識技術を用いて，表情と身体動作から人の感情をリアルタイムに推定する感情推定手法について検討する．

DOI： 10.11517/pjsai.jsai2017.0_1d11

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC  

A metal membrane and a polyethersulfone (PES) membrane were compared in this study. The surface morphology, inherent resistance, and critical flux of the membranes were first investigated. The two membranes were then placed in an activated sludge reactor to treat municipal sewage. The two membranes showed similar removal efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia, and total nitrogen (TN). The average effluent COD removal efficiencies, effluent ammonia, and effluent TN removal efficiencies were approximately 94.00%, 0.19mg/L, and 28.22%, respectively. The metal membrane showed lower inherent membrane resistance of 0.27x10(11)m(-1), higher critical flux of 0.7m(3)/(m(2)d), higher anti-fouling ability, and slower transmembrane pressure increasing rate compared with the PES membrane. The main fouling mechanism of the metal membrane was cake formation, whereas that of the PES membrane was pore blocking. The metal membrane was easy to recover after fouling. The results of the study suggest that the metal membrane can be potentially applied in a membrane bioreactor.

DOI： 10.1080/19443994.2014.923213

Web of Science

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：WILEY  

The present study examined the binding of the individual N- and C-lobes of calmodulin (CaM) Cav1.2 at different Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]) from approximate to free to 2 mM, and found that they may to Cav1.2 Ca2+-dependently. In particular, using the patch-clamp technique, we confirmed that N- or C-lobes can rescue the basal activity of Cav1.2 from run-down, demonstrating the relevance of the individual lobes. The data imply that at resting [Ca2+], CaM may tether to channel with its single lobe, leading to multiple CaM molecule binding to increase the grade Ca2+-dependent regulation of Cav1.2.

DOI： 10.1016/j.febslet.2014.09.029

Web of Science

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：TRANS TECH PUBLICATIONS LTD  

The resources of excess sludge exist in zoogloea and bacteria cells. Excess sludge disintegration technique enables the full release of the organic matter in sludge, so that nutrients, energy and other resources in sludge can be fully recycled, meanwhile, the reduction of sludge solids matter can be achieved. Excess sludge disintegration is necessary preprocessing to achieve the "harmlessness, reduction and recycle" goal of sludge disposal. This article describes the physical, mechanical, chemical, biological, and the combined sludge disintegration method, as well as the principle, characteristics, research progress, and the main research results of various sludge disintegration method.

DOI： 10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.726-731.2949

Web of Science