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In this research, I developed a drum stick device that can perform and practice with only shaking motion to solve the problem such as the noise and portability which the drum has. The sensor detects the swing and the direction of the stick and outputs the sound. Simultaneously with the sound, the actuator is activated to generate force feedback, thereby realizing a more realistic performance experience.

In this paper, the maneuverability of a haptic surgical robot for single-port surgery (SPS), termed HASROSS, developed in our laboratory is evaluated. The kinematics of the surgical robot was analyzed and a position control method on the basis of inverse kinematics was proposed to control the surgical robot intuitively. The surgical robot operates under master?slave control implemented by the haptic interface Omega 7 and a force feedback is provided to the operator. The maneuverability of the surgical robot was assessed in a block transfer experiment, a ligation experiment and a grape peeling experiment. The completion times of forceps manipulation by robot operation were ompared with those of manual operation. To assess the force feedback functionality of the surgical robot, we tested whether the robot could properly contact and avoid obstacles using the forceps. The results verified the effectiveness of the HASROSS.

In this study, a new scaling method for force feedback is proposed for the surgical robot developed in our laboratory, incorporating an analysis of the shaft of the forceps based on beam theory. A six-axis force and torque sensor is attached to the base parts of the forceps manipulator of the surgical robot to detect a force which is added at the tip or shaft part of the forceps. Then, the detected force is amplified using the proposed scaling method and the amplified force is realized through the haptic device Omega.7. Experiments were carried out to verify an effectiveness of the proposed scaling method. The results showed that the operator of the surgical robot can sense a small force which was added to the forceps more clearly and quickly compared with that realized when the conventional constant scaling method is used.

This paper proposes an algorithm that estimates a reaction torque loading the grasping jaws of wire-actuated robotic forceps and compensates for subsequent wire elongation. The algorithm is constructed by the combination of the Reaction Force Observer (RFOB) and an optimization problem based on a gradient descent method. The conventional RFOB is used to estimate an external torque that includes not only the reaction torque but also the acceleration of wire elongation. The wire elongation is directly obtained from the differential equation of wire elongation. Then, as a solution of the optimization problem, the acceleration of the wire elongation is obtained. Thus, the reaction torque is derived by subtracting the acceleration of wire elongation from the external torque estimated by the RFOB. The previous algorithm required an assumption that the motor torque and reaction torque are constant, although they fluctuate in practice. The new algorithm eliminates this assumption, resulting much improved accuracy in estimating the reaction torque. The improvement was verified through simulation.

Virtual reality (VR) based surgical simulators have been developed in order to fulfill the demands for improving quality of medical education and training. VR simulators enable to record information about expert's procedures in real time, and therefore may allow trainees to learn the skill though haptic device. However, sharing haptic information between skilled surgeons and trainees on surgical procedure is technically a difficult problem. This study proposes methods for sharing haptic information between two persons in manipulating virtual elastic objects which physically simulate organ behavior. Our methods visualize depth information of recorded 3D position of manipulators and allow adjusting replay speed. The experiments were done to confirm the performance of the proposed methods in mimicking basic manipulation tasks. We conclude that our framework allows the user to trace 3D recorded position more accurately, which contributes to haptic information sharing in manipulating elastic objects.

The environment where Japanese industry has been paid with respect is changing tremendously due to the globalization of economics, where Asian countries are undergoing economical and technical development as well as advancing in information technology. For example, in the design of custom-made casting product, a designer who is lack of casting knowledge may not be able to produce a good design. In order to obtain a good design and manufacturing, it is necessary to equip the designer and manufacturer with a support system related to casting design or so called, knowledge transfer and creation system. This report describes a new virtual reality based knowledge acquisition and job training system for casting design, which is composed of the explicit and tacit knowledge transfer system using synchronized multimedia and the knowledge internalization system using portable virtual environment. In our proposed system, the education content is displayed in the immersive virtual environment, where by a trainee may experience himself in the virtual site operations. Provided that the trainee has gained explicit and tacit knowledge of casting through the multimedia-based knowledge transfer system, the immersive virtual environment serves as an internalization of knowledge and also enable the trainee to gain tacit knowledge before undergoing on the job training at real operation site.

Force feedback plays an important roll in recognition and manipulation of virtual objects. Recently haptic devices such as PHANToM and HapticMaster are manufactured. In accordance with rapidly growing network technologies, we can easily get electric media resources rpicture and movie and VRML and various digital sound data and so on. However, those electric media resources can only be seen and heard. We can't touch them because there is no software to integrate haptic devices and those electric media resources. In this research , we developed a system that enables users to easy construction of virtual environment with force feedback.We propose that the software for haptic device should have following characteristics. (1) haptic models and haptic rendering function. (2) managing engine of virtual object's behavior. (3) user interaction methods. We implemented the software called Virtual Environment Construction System(VECS).By using this system, we developed 3D shape modeling environment.Through userability study by a large numbers of subjects, effectiveness of the haptic environment is examined.