arXiv subjects

Takahiro Wada

Publications and source records attributed to Takahiro Wada.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Soft-Jig: A Flexible Sensing Jig for Simultaneously Fixing and Estimating Orientation of Assembly Parts

For assembly tasks, it is essential to firmly fix target parts and to accurately estimate their poses. Several rigid jigs for individual parts are frequently used in assembly factories to achieve precise and time-efficient product assembly. However, providing customized jigs is time-consuming. In this study, to address the lack of versatility in the shapes the jigs can be used for, we developed a flexible jig with a soft membrane including transparent beads and oil with a tuned refractive index. The bead-based jamming transition was accomplished by discharging only oil enabling a part to be firmly fixed. Because the two cameras under the jig are able to capture membrane shape changes, we proposed a sensing method to estimate the orientation of the part based on the behaviors of markers created on the jig's inner surface. Through estimation experiments, the proposed system could estimate the orientation of a cylindrical object with a diameter larger than 50 mm and an RMSE of less than 3 degrees.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2021

Computational Model of Motion Sickness Describing the Effects of Learning Exogenous Motion Dynamics

The existing computational models used to estimate motion sickness are incapable of describing the fact that the predictability of motion patterns affects motion sickness. Therefore, the present study proposes a computational model to describe the effect of the predictability of dynamics or the pattern of motion stimuli on motion sickness. In the proposed model, a submodel, in which a recursive Gaussian process regression is used to represent human features of online learning and future prediction of motion dynamics, is combined with a conventional model of motion sickness based on an observer theory. A simulation experiment was conducted in which the proposed model predicted motion sickness caused by a 900 s horizontal movement. The movement was composed of a 9 m repetitive back-and-forth movement pattern with a pause. Regarding the motion condition, the direction and timing of the motion were varied as follows: a) Predictable motion (M_P): the direction of the motion and duration of the pause were set to 8 s; b) Motion with unpredicted direction (M_dU): the pause duration was fixed as in (P), but the motion direction was randomly determined; c) Motion with unpredicted timing (M_tU): the motion direction was fixed as in (M_P), but the pause duration was randomly selected from 4 to 12 s. The results obtained using the proposed model demonstrated that the predicted motion sickness incidence for (M_P) was smaller than those for (M_dU) and (M_tU). This tendency agrees with the sickness patterns observed in a previous experimental study in which the human participants were subject to motion conditions similar to those used in our simulations. Moreover, no significant differences were found in the predicted motion sickness incidences at different conditions when the conventional model was used.

q-bio.QM↗

arXiv2019

Simultaneous Achievement of Driver Assistance and Skill Development in Shared and Cooperative Controls

Advanced driver assistance systems have successfully reduced drivers' workloads and increased safety. On the other hand, the excessive use of such systems can impede the development of driving skills. However, there exist collaborative driver assistance systems, including shared and cooperative controls, which can promote effective collaboration between an assistance system and a human operator under appropriate system settings. Given an effective collaboration setup, we address the goal of simultaneously developing or maintaining driving skills while reducing workload. As there has been a paucity of research on such systems and their methodologies, we discuss a methodology applying shared and cooperative controls by considering related concepts in the skill training field. Reverse parking assisted by haptic shared control is presented as a means of increasing performance during assistance, while skill improvement following assistance is used to demonstrate the possibility of simultaneous achievement of driver assistance through the reduction of workload and skill improvement.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2017

Analysis of Driver's Head Tilt Using a Mathematical Model of Motion Sickness

It is known that car drivers tilt their head toward the center of a curve. In addition, drivers are generally less susceptible to carsickness than are the passengers. This paper uses a mathematical model to investigate the effect of the head-tilt strategy on motion sickness. It is shown that tilting the head in the centripetal direction reduces the estimated motion sickness incidence (MSI), defined as the percentage of subjects who vomited. In addition, the head movements of both drivers and passengers were measured in a real car. It is also shown that the estimated MSI of the drivers is smaller than that of the passengers. Experimental results presented in previous studies demonstrated that the severity of motion sickness was reduced when passengers imitated the head tilt of the driver. These results strongly suggest that the driver's head tilt reduces motion sickness, and this can be understood as a subjective vertical conflict.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2017

Effect of passengers' active head tilt and opening/closure of eyes on motion sickness in lateral acceleration environment of cars

This study examined the effect of passengers' active head-tilt and eyes-open/closed conditions on the severity of motion sickness in the lateral acceleration environment of cars. In the centrifugal head-tilt condition, participants intentionally tilted their heads towards the centrifugal force, whereas in the centripetal head-tilt condition, the participants tilted their heads against the centrifugal acceleration. The eyes-open and eyes-closed cases were investigated for each head-tilt condition. In the experimental runs, the sickness rating in the centripetal head-tilt condition was significantly lower than that in the centrifugal head-tilt condition. Moreover, the sickness rating in the eyes-open condition was significantly lower than that in the eyes-closed condition. The results suggest that an active head-tilt motion against the centrifugal acceleration reduces the severity of motion sickness both in the eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions. They also demonstrate that the eyes-open condition significantly reduces the motion sickness even when the head-tilt strategy is used.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2017

Knee Motion Generation Method for Transfemoral Prosthesis based on Kinematic Synergy and Inertial Motion

Previous research has shown that the effective use of inertial motion (i.e., less or no torque input at the knee joint) plays an important role in achieving a smooth gait of transfemoral prostheses in the swing phase. In our previous research, a method for generating a timed knee trajectory close to able-bodied individuals, which leads to sufficient clearance between the foot and the floor and the knee extension, was proposed using the inertial motion. Limb motions are known to correlate with each other during walking. This phenomenon is called kinematic synergy. In the present study, we measure gaits in level walking of able-bodied individuals with a wide range of walking velocities. We show that this kinematic synergy also exists between the motions of the intact limbs and those of the knee as determined by the inertial motion technique. We then propose a new method for generating the motion of the knee joint using its inertial motion close to the able-bodied individuals in mid-swing based on its kinematic synergy, such that the method can adapt to the changes in the motion velocity. The numerical simulation results show that the proposed method achieves prosthetic walking similar to that of able-bodied individuals with a wide range of constant walking velocities and termination of walking from steady-state walking. Further investigations have found that a kinematic synergy also exists at the start of walking. Overall, our method successfully achieves knee motion generation from the initiation of walking through steady-state walking with different velocities until termination of walking.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2016

Dose and dose-rate dependence of mutation frequency under long-term exposure - A new look at DDREF from WAM model -

We investigate the dose and dose-rate dependence of the mutation frequency caused by artificial radiations with Whack-A-Mole (WAM) model which we have recently proposed. In particular, we pay special attention to the case of long-term and low dose-rate exposure. The results indicate that the dose-rate dependence is successfully described with WAM model and it may replace the so-called DDREF, the concept of which has long been adopted to take account of the difference between the high dose-rate data and the low dose-rate ones. Basic properties of WAM model are discussed emphasizing the dose-rate dependence to demonstrate how the explicit dose-rate dependence built in the model plays a key role. By adopting the parameters that are determined to fit the mega mouse experiments, biological effects of long-term exposure to extremely low dose-rate radiation are discussed. In WAM model, the effects of the long-term exposure show a saturation property, which makes a clear distinction from the LNT hypothesis which predicts a linear increase of the effects with time.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2015

Can Passenger's Active Head Tilt Decrease The Severity of Carsickness? - Effect of Head Tilt on Severity of Motion Sickness in a Lateral Acceleration Environment

Objective: We investigated the effect of the passenger head-tilt strategy on the severity of carsickness in lateral acceleration situations in automobiles. Background: It is well known that the driver is generally less susceptible to carsickness than are the passengers. However, it is also known that the driver tilts his or her head toward the curve center when negotiating a curve, whereas the passenger's head moves in the opposite direction. Therefore, we hypothesized that the head-tilt strategy has the effect of reducing the severity of carsickness. Method: A passenger car was driven on a quasi-oval track with a pylon slalom while the participant sat in the navigator seat. The experiment was terminated when either the participant felt the initial symptoms of motion sickness or the car finished 20 laps. In the natural head-tilt condition, the participants were instructed to sit naturally, to relax, and not to oppose the lateral acceleration intentionally. In the active head-tilt condition, the participants were asked to tilt their heads against the centrifugal acceleration, thus imitating the driver's head tilt. Results: The number of laps achieved in the active condition was significantly greater than that in the natural condition. In addition, the subjective ratings of motion sickness and symptoms in the active condition were significantly lower than those in the natural condition. Conclusion: We suggest that an active head tilt against centrifugal acceleration reduces the severity of motion sickness. Application: Potential applications of this study include development of a methodology to reduce carsickness.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2015

Haptic Shared Control in Steering Operation Based on Cooperative Status Between a Driver and a Driver Assistance System

Haptic shared control is expected to achieve a smooth collaboration between humans and automated systems, because haptics facilitate mutual communication. A methodology for sharing a given task is important to achieve effective shared control. Therefore, the appropriate cooperative relationship between a human operator and automated system should be considered. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate the cooperative status between the operator and the automated system in the haptic shared control of a steering operation using a pseudo-power pair of torque from each agent and the vehicle lateral velocity as each agent's contribution to vehicle motion. This method allows us to estimate cooperative status based on two axes: the initiative holder and the intent consistency between the two agents. A control method for a lane-keeping assist system (LKAS) that enables drivers to change lanes smoothly is proposed based on the estimated cooperative status. A gain-tuning control method based on the estimated cooperative status is proposed to decrease the assistance system's pseudo-power when intent inconsistency occurs. A method for switching the followed lane to match the driver's and assistance system's intentions is also proposed. A user study using a driving simulator is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed methods facilitate smooth driver-initiated lane changes without significantly affecting the driver's torque or steering wheel angle while significantly improve lane-keeping performance.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2015

A Mathematical Model of Motion Sickness in 6DOF Motion and Its Application to Vehicle Passengers

A mathematical model of motion sickness incidence (MSI) is derived by integrating neurophysiological knowledge of the vestibular system to predict the severity of motion sickness of humans. Bos et al. proposed the successful mathematical model of motion sickness based on the neurophysiological mechanism based on the subject vertical conflict (SVC) theory. We expand this model to 6-DOF motion, including head rotation, by introducing the otolith-canal interaction. Then the model is applied to an analysis of passengers' comfort. It is known that the driver is less susceptible to motion sickness than are the passengers. In addition, it is known that the driver tilts his/her head toward the curve direction when curve driving, whereas the passengers' head movement is likely to occur in the opposite direction. Thus, the effect of the head tilt strategy on motion sickness was investigated by the proposed mathematical model. The head movements of drivers and passengers were measured in slalom driving. Then, the MSI of the drivers and that of the passengers predicted by the proposed model were compared. The results revealed that the head movement toward the centripetal direction has a significant effect in reducing the MSI in the sense of SVC theory.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2015

Whack-A-Mole Model: Towards unified description of biological effect caused by radiation-exposure

We present a novel model to estimate biological effects caused by artificial radiation exposure, Whack-a-mole (WAM) model. It is important to take account of the recovery effects during the time course of the cellular reactions. The inclusion of the dose-rate dependence is essential in the risk estimation of low dose radiation, while nearly all the existing theoretical models relies on the total dose dependence only. By analyzing the experimental data of the relation between the radiation dose and the induced mutation frequency of 5 organisms, mouse, drosophila, chrysanthemum, maize and tradescantia, we found that all the data can be reproduced by WAM model. Most remarkably, a scaling function, which is derived from WAM model, consistently accounts for the observed mutation frequencies of 5 organisms. This is the first rationale to account for the dose rate dependence as well as to give a unified understanding of a general feature of organisms.

physics.bio-ph↗