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Real-time tracking of human body motion is an important technology in synthetic environments, robotics, and other human-computer interaction applications. This paper presents an ultra-miniaturized inertial measurement unit (IMU) named WB-3 for real-time attitude estimation of human limb segments. The WB-3 IMU is provided with a 32-bit microcontroller and 9-axis inertial sensors (miniaturized MEMS accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer). The quaternion-based Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) was implemented for the sensor fusion to retrieve the attitude of the human segment. An upper body motion capture system with 12 WB-3 IMUs was elaborated for tracking human movements in real time scenarios.

In the era of globalization and standardization, in the perspective of industrial system integration, the implementation of a network framework able to interconnect any type of device and supporting both real-time (RT) and time-uncritical communication is becoming a must. This paper proposes an original entirely software-based communication framework to support RT communication over standard Ethernet, and compares it with the most relevant commercially available RT protocols in term of global costs and performances.

In recent years there has been an ever increasing amount of research and development of technologies and methodologies aimed at improving the safety of advanced surgery. In this context, several training methods and metrics have been proposed, in particular for laparoscopy, both to improve the surgeon's abilities and also to assess her/his skills. For neurosurgery, however, the extremely small movements and sizes involved have prevented until now the development of similar methodologies and systems. In this paper we present the development of the ultra-miniaturized Inertial Measurement Unit WB3 (at present the smallest, lightest, and best performing in the world) for practical application in neurosurgery as skill assessment tool. This paper presents the feasibility study for quantitative discrimination of movements of experienced surgeons and beginners in a simple pick and place scenario.

Our world is getting older and older (OECD 2009), and therefore there is considerable expectation for more widespread home, medical, and nursing care services to assist not self-sufficient elderly people, both from the physical and psychological points of view. In this context, robots are expected to perform human tasks such as operating equipment designed for humans in dangerous environments, providing personal assistance, social care, cognitive therapy, entertainment, and education (Kozima, Nakagawa et al. 2007). These robots should be capable of a smooth and natural adaptation and interaction with their human partners as well as with the environment. They should also be able to communicate naturally with humans, especially in home and personal assistance applications for elderly and/or handicapped persons. Moreover, these devices should be safe and, more in general, should never have a negative effect on their human partners, neither physical nor emotional.

Personal robots and Robot Technology (RT)-based assistive devices are expected to play a substantial role in our society, largely populated by elders; they will play an active role in joint works and community life with humans. In particular, these robots are expected to play an important role for the assistance of elderly and disabled people during normal activities of daily living (ADLs). To achieve this result, personal robots should be also capable of human-like emotion expressions. In this perspective we developed a whole body bipedal humanoid robot, named KOBIAN, which is also capable to express human-like emotions. In this paper we present the mechanical and modular design of KOBAIN.

In recent years there has been an ever increasing amount of research and development of technologies and methods to improve the quality and the performance of advanced surgery. In other fields several training methods and metrics have been proposed, both to improve the surgeon's abilities and also to assess her/his skills. For neurosurgery, however, the extremely small movements and sizes involved have prevented until now the development of similar methodologies and systems. In this paper we present the development of an ultra-miniaturized Inertial Measurement Unit and its application for the evaluation of the performance in a simple pick and place scenario. This analysis is a preliminary yet fundamental step to realize a better training/evaluation system for neurosurgeons, and to objectively evaluate and understand how the neurosurgery is performed.

Personal robots and robot technology (RT)-based assistive devices are expected to play a major role in our elderly-dominated society, with an active participation to joint works and community life with humans, as partner and as friends for us. In particular, these robots are expected to be fundamental for helping and assisting elderly and disabled people during their activities of daily living (ADLs). To achieve this result, personal robots should be also capable of human-like emotion expressions. To this purpose we developed a new whole body emotion expressing bipedal humanoid robot, named KOBIAN, which is also capable to express human-like emotions. In this paper we presented three different evaluations of the emotional expressiveness of KOBIAN. In particular In particular, we presented the analysis of the roles of the face, the body, and their combination in emotional expressions. We also compared Emotional patterns created by a Photographer and a Cartoonist with the ones created by us. Overall, although the experimental results are not as good as we were expecting, we confirmed the robot can clearly express its emotions, and that very high recognition ratios are possible.

In recent years there has been an ever increasing amount of research and development of technologies and methods to improve the quality and the performance of advanced surgery. In several fields, such as laparoscopy, various training methods and metrics have been proposed, both to improve the surgeon's abilities and also to assess her/his skills. For neurosurgery, however, the extremely small movements and target operating space involved have prevented until now the development of similar methodologies and systems. In this paper we present the development of an ultra-miniaturized Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and its application for neurosurgery skill assessment in a simple pick and place scenario. This analysis is a preliminary yet fundamental step to realize a better training/evaluation system for neurosurgeons, and to objectively evaluate and understand how the neurosurgery is performed.

There has been an ever increasing amount of research and development of technologies and methods to improve the safety of surgery such as Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). While these new technologies and methods have many advantages for patients, they often require surgeons to undergo long and difficult training. In this context, several training methods and metrics have been proposed, both to improve the surgeon's abilities and also to assess his/her skills. Our research is aimed at using WB-2R (Waseda Bioinstrumentation system NO.2 Refined), to investigate and analyze a surgeon's movements and performance. In this paper, we analyze the effects of two days of laparoscopic training on a novice subject. By using the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) of WB-2R it is possible to evaluate the novice's ability and improvement to handle surgical instruments and perform some knots of basic C-Loop suture. The preliminary analysis of the data acquired during the experiments (the mean and standard deviation of acceleration; 95% cumulated distribution of acceleration; the path length of the movements of hands and the execution time completing the knots) clearly shows the novice's improvements after the training. WB-2R system could provide additional information improving to help assess the experience and performance of surgeons, and to show the effectiveness of laparoscopic training. These analyses and modeling are an important step to realize a better training/evaluation system for surgeons during MIS, to understand better how the surgery is performed.

In our elderly-dominated society, there is considerable expectation for a growing need for home, medical, and nursing care services to assist this aging society, both from the physical and psychological points of view. Among these services, special importance has the rehabilitation process and specifically the clinical assessments of motor abilities. The current rehabilitation process, however, lacks of objectiveness. Our research is aimed at the development of a portable Bioinstrumentation System that can objectively measure and assess the physical and physiological effects of the rehabilitation therapy, both in the hospital/rehabilitation center and at home, by integrating the analysis of human motion into the analysis of physiological indexes. More specifically, objective of this research is to develop a wearable bioinstrumentation system capable of an objective analysis of the physical and psychological conditions of the user during the activities of daily life.

Personal robots and robot technology (RT)-based assistive devices are expected to play a major role in our elderly-dominated society, with an active participation to joint works and community life with humans, as partner and as friends for us. In particular, these robots are expected to be fundamental for helping and assisting elderly and disabled people during their activities of daily living (ADLs). To achieve this result, personal robots should be capable of human-like emotion expressions; in addition, human-like bipedal walking is the best solution for the robots which should be active in the human living environment. Although several bipedal robots and several emotional expression robots have been developed in the recent years, until now there was no robot which integrated all these functions. Therefore we developed a new bipedal walking robot, named KOBIAN, which is also capable to express human-like emotions. In this paper, we present the design and the preliminary evaluation of the new emotional expression head. The preliminary results showed that the emotion expressed by only the head cannot be really easily understood by the users. However, the presence of a full body clearly enhances the emotion expression capability of the robot, thus proving the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Personal robots and robot technology (RT)-based assistive devices are expected to play a major role in our elderly-dominated society, with an active participation to joint works and community life with humans, as partner and as friends for us. The authors think that the emotion expression of a robot is effective in joint activities of human and robot. In addition, we also think that bipedal walking is necessary to robots which are active in human living environment. But, there was no robot which has those functions. And, it is not clear what kinds of functions are effective actually. Therefore we developed a new bipedal walking robot which is capable to express emotions. In this paper, we present the design and the preliminary evaluation of the new head of the robot with only a small number of degrees of freedom for facial expression.

Personal robots and robot technology (RT)- based assistive devices are expected to play a major role in Japan's elderly-dominated society, both for joint activities with their human partners and for participation in community life. These new devices should be capable of smooth and natural adaptation and interaction with their human partners and the environment, should be able to communicate naturally with humans, and should never have a negative effect on their human partners, neither physical nor emotional. To achieve this smooth and natural integration between humans and robots, we need first to investigate and clarify how these interactions are carried out. Therefore, we developed the portable bioinstrumentation system WB-2 (Waseda bioinstrumentation system No.2), which can measure the movements of the head, the arms, and the hands (position, velocity, and acceleration), as well as several physiological parameters (electrical activity of the heart respiration, perspiration, pulse wave, and so on), to objectively measure and understand the physical and physiological effects of the interaction between robots and humans. In this paper we present our development of the Inertial Measurement Unit, which is at the heart of our new motion-capture system that replaces the system used in the Waseda bioinstrumentation system No.1 refined (WB-1R). Some preliminary results of experiments with the unit are also presented and analyzed.

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become very common in recent years, thanks to the many advantages it provides for patients. Since it is difficult for surgeons to learn and master this technique, several training methods and metrics have been proposed, both to improve the surgeon's abilities and also to assess his/her skills. This paper presents the use of the WB-1R (Waseda bioinstrumentation system no.1 refined), which was developed at Waseda University, Tokyo, to investigate and analyze a surgeon's movements and performance. Specifically, the system can measure the movements of the head, the arms, and the hands, as well as several physiological parameters. In this paper we present our experiment to evaluate a surgeon's ability to handle surgical instruments and his/her depth perception using a laparoscopic view. Our preliminary analysis of a subset of the acquired data (i.e. comfort of the subjects; the amount of time it took o complete each exercise; and respiration) clearly shows that the expert surgeon and the group of medical students perform very differently. Therefore, WB-1R (or, better, a newer version tailored specifically for use in the operating room) could provide important additional information to help assess the experience and performance of surgeons, thus leading to the development of a global performance index for surgeons during MIS. These analyses and modeling, moreover, are an important step towards the automatization and the robotic assistance of the surgical gesture.

Personal Robots and Robot Technology (RT)-based assistive devices are expected to play a major role in Japan's elderly-dominated society, both for joint activities with their human partners and for participation in community life. These new devices should be capable of smooth and natural adaptation and interaction with their human partners and the environment, should be able to communicate naturally with humans, and should never have a negative effect on their human partners, neither physical nor emotional. To achieve this smooth and natural integration between humans and robots, we need first to investigate and clarify how these interactions are carried out. Therefore, we developed the portable Bioinstrumentation System WB-1R (Waseda Bioinstrumentation system no.l Refined), which can measure the movements of the head, the arms, the hands (position, velocity, and acceleration), as well as several physiological parameters (electrocardiogram, respiration, perspiration, pulse wave, and so on), to objectively measure and understand the physical and physiological effects of the interaction between robots and humans. In this paper we present our development of the head and hands motion capture systems as additional modules for the Waseda Bioinstrumentation system No.1 (WB-1). The preliminary experimental results, given the inexpensiveness of the systems, are good for our purposes.

Personal robots, which are expected to become popular in the future, are required to be active in joint work and community life with humans. Such robots must have no bad physical or psychical effect on humans. The psychical effect of a robot on humans has been subjectively measured using questionnaires. However, it has not been objectively measured yet. Human emotion and the consciousness direction can be measured by physiological parameters and body motion, respectively. Therefore, the bioinstrumentation system WB-1 was developed in order to objectively measure the psychical effect of a robot on a human. It can measure physiological parameters such as respiration, heart rate, perspiration and pulse wave, and arm motion. Analyzing human stress in the interaction with a robot from electrocardiogram, the robot could generate a motion for decreasing the stress.

Personal robots, which are expected to become popular in the near future, are required to be active in work and community life alongside humans. Therefore, we have been developing new mechanisms and functions in order to realize natural bilateral interaction by expressing emotions, behaviors and personality in a human-like manner. We have proposed a mental model with emotion, mood, personality and needs. However, the robot behavior was very simple since the robot shows just a single kind of behavior in response to a robot mental state. In this paper, we present a new behavior model for humanoid robots based on operant conditioning, which is a well-known psychological behavior model. We implemented this new behavior model into the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II), developed in 2004. Through the experimental evaluations, we confirmed that the robot with the new behavior model could autonomously select suitable behavior for the situation within a predefined behavior list

Personal robots, which are expected to become popular in the future, are required to be active in joint work and community life with humans. Therefore, we have been developing new mechanisms and functions for a humanoid robot that has the ability to express emotions and to communicate with humans in a human-like manner. In 2004, we introduced the "Behavior Model" and "Consciousness Model" to the robot mental model so that the robot generated various kinds of behavior and an object of the robot's behavior became clear. We implemented the mental model in the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II). Also, we have been studying a system of multiple harmonic oscillators (neurons) interacting via chaotic force since 2002. Each harmonic oscillator is driven by chaotic force whose bifurcation parameter is modulated by the position of the harmonic oscillator. In this paper, we propose an associative memory model using mutually coupled chaotic neural networks for generating an optimum behavior to a stimulus. We implemented this model in the emotional expression humanoid robot WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II).

The authors have been developing humanoid robots in order to develop new mechanisms and functions for a humanoid robot that has the ability to communicate naturally with a human by expressing human-like emotion. We considered that human hands play an important role in communication because human hands have grasping, sensing and emotional expression abilities. Then, we developed the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II) by integrating the new humanoid robot hands RCH-1 (RoboCasa Hand No.1) into the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4R. Furthermore, we confirmed that RCH-1 and WE-4RII had effective emotional expression ability because the correct recognition rate of WE-4RII's emotional expressions was higher than the WE-4R's one. In this paper, we describe the mechanical features of WE-4RII.

This paper presents an underactuated artificial hand intended for functional replacement of the natural hand in upper limb amputees. The natural hand has three basic functionalities: grasping, manipulation and exploration. To accomplish the goal of restoring these capabilities by implanting an artificial hand, two fundamental steps are necessary: to develop an artificial hand equipped with artificial proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensors and to fabricate an appropriate interface able to exchange sensory-motor signals with the amputee's body and the central nervous system. In order to address these objectives, we have studied an underactuated hand according to a biomimetic approach, and we have exploited robotic and microengineering technologies to design and fabricate its building blocks. The architecture of the hand comprises the following modules: an actuator system embedded in the underactuated mechanical structure (artificial musculoskeletal system), a proprioceptive sensory system (position and force sensors), an exteroceptive sensory system (3D force sensors distributed on the cosmetic glove), an embedded control unit, and a human/machine interface. The first prototype of the artificial hand has been designed and fabricated. The hand is underactuated, and is equipped with opposable thumb and a proprioceptive sensory system. This paper presents the fabrication and experimental characterization of the hand, focusing on the mechanical structure, the actuator system and the proprioceptive sensory system.

The aim of this paper is to discuss an ideal design procedure for biologically-inspired mechano-sensors. The main steps of this procedure are the following: (1) analysis of force and position sensors in humans; (2) analysis of technologies available for MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) and (3) design and implementation of biologically-inspired sensors in innovative mechatronic and biomechatronic systems (e.g., anthropomorphic robots, prostheses, and neuroprostheses).

An ideal upper limb prosthesis should be perceived as part of the natural body by the amputee and should replicate sensory-motor capabilities of the amputated limb. However, such an ideal cybernetic prosthesis is still far from reality: current prosthetic hands are simple grippers with one or two degrees of freedom, which barely restore the capability of the thumb-index pinch. The paper describes the design and fabrication of a prosthetic hand based on a biomechatronic and cybernetic approach. Our approach is aimed at providing natural sensory-motor coordination to the amputee, by integrating biomimetic mechanisms, sensors, actuators and control, and by interfacing the hand with the peripheral nervous system.

The surface electromyography (sEMG) signal is affected by different sources of noises: current technology is considerably robust to the interferences of the power line or cable motion artefacts, but still there are many limitations in denoising the baseline. In this paper, we introduce a new technique, named baseline adaptive denoising algorithm (BADA), for denoising the sEMG signal by wavelet thresholding procedure. In particular, the thresholds are estimated using the same baseline signal with fixed and adaptive techniques. Eventually, we verify that the proposed adaptive method performs better than the standard Donoho technique and different variations, in term of noise cancellation and distortion of the signal, quantified by a new suggested indicator of the denoising quality.

This paper presents the preliminary performance evaluation of our new wireless ultra-miniaturized inertial measurement unit (IMU) WB-4 by compared with the Vicon motion capture system. The WB-4 IMU primarily contains a mother board for motion sensing, a Bluetooth module for wireless data transmission with PC, and a Li-Polymer battery for power supply. The mother board is provided with a microcontroller and 9-axis inertial sensors (miniaturized MEMS accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer) to measure orientation. A quaternion-based extended Kalman filter (EKF) integrated with an R-Adaptive algorithm for automatic estimation of the measurement covariance matrix is implemented for the sensor fusion to retrieve the attitude. The experimental results showed that the wireless ultra-miniaturized WB-4 IMU could provide high accuracy performance at the angles of roll and pitch. The yaw angle which has reasonable performance needs to be further evaluated.

The authors have been developing humanoid robots in order to develop new mechanisms and functions for a humanoid robot that has the ability to communicate naturally with a human by expressing human-like emotion. In 2004, we developed the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II) by integrating the new humanoid robot hands RCH-I (RoboCasa Hand No.1) into the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4R. We confirmed that WE-4RII can effectively express its emotion.

In a society getting older year by year, Robot technology (RT) is expected to play an important role. In order to achieve this objective, the new generation of personal robots should be capable of a natural communication with humans by expressing human-like emotion. In this sense, the hands play a fundamental role in communication, because they have grasping, sensing and emotional expression ability. This paper presents the recent results of the collaboration between the Takanishi Lab of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and the Arts Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, and RoboCasa in a biologically-inspired approach for the development of a new humanoid hand. In particular, the grasping and gestural capabilities of the novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics RCH-1 (RoboCasa Hand No.1) are presented.

WABIAN-2R is a bipedal humanoid robot which is capable of stretched knee walking with heel-contact and toe-off motions due to the presence of a 2-DoF waist and a passive joint for bending toe motion, and can thus mimic human-like walking. This paper aims to determine the similarity between the walking gait of WABIAN-2R to the natural walking gait of a human of comparable size and stature, on the factors (i) pelvic tilt, (ii) pelvic rotation, (iii) swing and stance percentage, and (iv) double limb support and single limb support percentage using inertial measurement units and force-torque sensors.

A Personal Robot is expected to become popular in the future. It is required to be active in joint work and community life with humans. Therefore, we have been developing new mechanisms and functions for a humanoid robot that can express emotions and communicate naturally with humans. In this paper, we present the mechanical design of the Emotion Expression Humanoid Robot WE-4RII, which was developed by integrating the Humanoid Robot Hands RCH-1 into the previous version WE-4R. The robot has four of the five human senses for detecting external stimuli: visual, tactile, auditory and olfactory, and 59-DOFs for expressing motion and emotions. It is capable of expressing seven basic emotional patterns.

The objective of the project described in this paper is the development of a cybernetic prosthesis, replicating as much as possible the sensory-motor capabilities of the natural hand. The human hand is not only an effective tool but also an ideal instrument to acquire information from the external environment. The development of a truly human-like artificial hand is probably the most widely known paradigm of "bionics". The Cyberhand Project aims to obtain a cybernetic prosthetic hand interfaced to the peripheral nervous system. In particular this paper is focused on the hand mechanisms design and it presents preliminary results in developing the three fingered anthropomorphic hand prototype and its sensory system.

The field of humanoids robotics is widely recognized as the current challenge for robotics research. Developing humanoids poses fascinating problems in the realization of manipulation capability, which is still one of most complex problem in robotics. The paper, starting from an overview of current activities in the development of humanoid robots, with special focus on manipulation, presents the authors' approach to the design and development of anthropomorphic sensorized hands and of anthropomorphic control and sensory-motor coordination schemes. Current achievements at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna and Centro INAIL RTR (Research Centre on Rehabilitation Bioengineering) in the development of a robotic human prosthesis are described, together with preliminary experimental results, as well as in the implementation of biologically-inspired schemes for control and sensory-motor co-ordination, derived from models of well-identified human brain areas.

Among social infrastructure technologies, robot technology (RT) is expected to play an important role in solving the problems of both decrease of birth rate and increase of elderly people in the 21st century, specially (but not only) in Japan where the average age of the population is rising faster than any other nation in the world. In order to achieve this objective, the new generation of personal robots should be capable of a natural communication with humans by expressing human-like emotion. In this sense, human hands play a fundamental role in exploration, communication and interaction with objects and other persons. This paper presents the recent results of the collaboration between the Takanishi Lab of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, the Arts Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy, and ROBOCASA, Tokyo, Japan. At first, the integration of the artificial hand RTR-2 of ARTS lab with the humanoid robotic platform WE-4R during ROBODEX2003 is presented. Then, the paper show the preliminary results of the development of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics RCH-I (ROBOCASA Hand No.1) and its integration into a new humanoid robotic platform, named WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II).