Search

Introduction: Researchers and technologists have been exploring ways to utilize robotic technology to aid elderly care and to increase their emotional wellbeing. Previous studies indicated that spirituality is a core factor for successful aging. Various research was done on therapeutic robots for the elderly with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). However, little focus was given to emotions and spiritual elements perceived by different genders. Therefore, this research aims to explore spiritual therapeutic robot design elements based on the elderly’s emotional experience by different genders. Methods: The research firstly conducted expert interview involving 9 experts on elderly care, robotics, and spiritual practice; secondly, KJ Method involving 4 language, spiritual, elderly care, and robotic experts; and thirdly, qualitative and quantitative Kansei assessment (n=12) among the elderly with early AD to determine the conceptual design guide, spiritual emotion words, and finalize the design guide. Results: Two-Sample t-Test shows five of ten spiritual design elements have a p-value of 0.05, which indicates there is a 50-50 chance of a significant difference in spiritual emotional experience between male and female respondents. Further analysis shows differences in results from both genders, but shows similar scores for zikr, surah, and prayer. Conclusion: The results enabled the research to produce a gender-based design guide for therapeutic robots based on spiritual elements and emotions, to successfully evoke positive emotions among the elderly with early AD. The gender-focused design will further extend the effectiveness as it will fit the specific demands of each gender, thus effectively elevating their emotional wellbeing.

The characteristics of anomalous radio propagation in the frequency 1 - 30 MHz before and after the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake are firstly revealed by using oblique ionograms for the pass from Wakkanai to Kokubunji which is closest to the epicenter. An oblique ionogram with a wavy-shape-trace was observed at 06:30 UTC on 11 March 2011 after the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. The velocity of northward-propagating disturbance caused this wavy-shape-trace is estimated to be 130 m/s. This wave-shape-trace shows very clear signature appearing in the oblique ionograms as the characteristic of strong ionospheric disturbances triggered by the earthquake. An oblique ionogram with a steep slopy-shape-trace was observed at 04:45 UTC on 11 March 2011 one hour before the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. This slopy-shape-trace is investigated as the signatures of preseismic ionospheric anomaly. This anomalous oblique ionogram with a slopy-shape-trace is examined with the slope ratio of virtual height to sweep-frequency, and the difference between monthly median foF2 and hourly value foF2 at Wakkanai and Kokubunji. These features appearing in oblique ionograms suggest that it is useful for studying the signatures of preseismic ionospheric anomaly.

Unintended Acceleration (UA) is a type of automobile accidents with automatic transmissions typically begin when the driver starts a driving cycle following to presses the one’s right foot on the brake while shifting from park to a drive or reverse gear. These accidents of UA cause extremely frightening and in the worst case have resulted in accidents which have been sometimes with injuries or death to the driver or pedestrians.The accident by UA becomes a serious issue in Japan with increasing in elderly drivers due to the aging of society. This study aims to comprehend a mechanism of pedaling misapplications to prevent a serious accident by interfaces implementing “Pedaling Depth Monitor”. The pedal misapplication prevention systems such as the automatic brakes, the suppressing accelerations and the gear lock mechanisms managed for avoiding the accident are still not spread because those system must be implemented into the hardware mechanical systems of the vehicle. In fact, the accidents of the pedal misapplication change in around from 6,000 to 7,000 cases a year in Japan. In addition, the accidents by UA cannot be completely prevented because the safe equipment is not perfect in general. This study intends to develop a system to prevent serious accidents by the interfaces implementing Pedaling Depth Monitor.This study has carried out two experiments to confirm availability of pedaling depth monitor. The first one is to examine cognitive processes of pedaling errors by Stop-signal task with dual task operations. The participants trialed stop-signal task with right foot alternative pedaling in the intervals of calculation tasks. This experiment resulted that there was an influence of time pressure to the pedaling operation. Then, the second experiment investigated awareness of notification which is displayed on the stepping depth monitor to be recognized by the participant. The results indicated the visual presentation which is easily recognized by the participants peripheral vision assuming the driving situation.

A temporary impairment of cognitive function is considered as one of reason of accidents by unintended acceleration. This study attempts to investigate influences to drivers’ cognition when providing stimulus concerned with driving situation via a presentation system with a multimodal interface. The prototypes of the system are examined by two stages of experiments using a simplified driving simulator and smart sensors in order to develop the interfaces as the software system. The purpose of the first experiment is to find out mechanisms of pedal misapplications and effects of visual and auditory interfaces. The second one is to examine interfaces by visual and auditory presentations in the driving situation. These examinations reveal the driver’s recognition of consistency that the driver percepts behavior of the vehicle following the one’s pedal operation.

This paper focuses on UX design procedures and aims to develop Kansei interface in order to improve usability of mobile applications. This study is intended to examine about contribution of Kansei interface to UX design. Kansei interface is understood as comprising emotional aspects directing to compose it like intuitive and compelling to use. The characteristics of Kansei interface are explained at the beginning of this article. Especially, human machine social interface is focused on as a principal element of Kansei Interface. Then, the designing mobile interface is illustrated as an example of UX design. UX design processes explore a customer journey map by user investigation. The application of Kansei interface is examined for the extracted activities at touch points. The human machine social interface implemented as Kansei interface is investigated by user questionnaires. The influence on the UX of Kansei interface is discussed from the experiment.

This pilot study focuses on Unintended Acceleration which is a driver’s experience full and unexpected acceleration with a pedal misapplication. The causes of such accidents have been investigated in a great deal of engineering reports from various viewpoints of mechanical or operational contexts. The innovation of human machine interface is expected to have a potential to contribute for reducing such accidents. The primary purpose of the previous studies is to identify the misapplications which causes the accidents by unintended acceleration and to develop the accident prevention mechanism by hardware and software approaches. The existing researches contributed to develop the suppressing the accident caused by a misapplication. However, the emotional aspect associated with driver’s desire to the active safety has not been noticed enough on the studies. This study started by motivation to consider the possibility of use the active safety system which introduced Kansei Interface. In order to solve the problem, the overview of unintended acceleration will be surveyed at the beginning of this study. Then, the existing prevention systems will be examined in the meaning of effectiveness and limitation. Kansei interface in order to prevent the accidents will be considered based on the survey. To develop the prevention system using Kansei interface as the final objective of our study, we will propose a rapid prototyping method to simulate the pedaling error.

The elderly population in Malaysia may increase to 15 percent from the country's population by the year 2030. This fact brings concern for the future prospect of the elderly care system in Malaysia, where there are possibilities of a robot being embedded into the life of the elderly. There have been many initiatives towards using robots as a therapeutic approach to improve the elderly Quality of Life (QoL). The relevant robotic studies for elderly are much associated with the Japanese Culture. However, there is a little study to investigate the feasibility of learning system using a robot among the elderly in Malaysia. The main objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using robots for elderly in Malaysia based on emotion requirement for the learning purposes. Persona approach will be used as a method to study on the three selected elderly from Tanjung Malim Elderly Activity Centre (PAWE). The result shows that majority of them are interested with the use of robot as learning assistant although they did not have any prior knowledge on robot learning before. Interesting, familiar and comfortable emotion value seems to be an important aspect for the implementation of robot as their therapeutic learning approach. Further research will investigate on the possibility of Kansei robotic implementation via robot assisted learning suitable with elderly emotion as well as enhance their emotion wellbeing.

Kansei engineering methods and text mining methods were applied to the web application for assisting sightseeing travel at Kure city. Kansei engineering methods used here were a questionnaire and multivariate analyses for research inter-relations between aims of travels and interests. Text mining was done on logged tweets on Twitter. The number of tweets mentioned on Kure was around 3400 to 3700 tweets per day. The text mining reveals latest events and people’s interests in the daily basis. With Twitter text mining to conventional Kansei engineering methods, both general Kansei on sightseeing and rapidly changing interests are kept reflecting to the inference rules of the web-application.

This paper is intended to investigate workers’ happiness and the elements of their emotional effects. This is one of the most important and fundamental area under positive psychology. In positive psychology studies, various methods have been proposed to identify happiness using subjective evaluations. However, the discussion in this study is limited to examining the relationship between workers’ general happiness index and seven emotional components that concerns happiness. Based on a sample of 9,654 respondents, this study was set out to identify whether seven emotional components based on the PERMAIg© model are related to the estimated general happiness using partial least square regression method. The results show that MLR and PLS regression analysis are similar in upper and lower five partial regression coefficients of the dependent variable. The number of significant items distributed on seven components lead to the total amount of variation of 37%. It can be concluded that the results are model independent, and the obtained weights of happiness elements are reliable to explain the workers’ happiness.

This paper discusses how to measure happiness from subjective worker’s emotion in one’s work environment. It is one of the most important and fundamental problems for positive psychology to measure happiness. In positive psychology study, many of scientific and experimental methods have been proposed as happiness testing or questionnaires. The methods are however depending on specific fields, test groups, and purposes of the measurement. The main issue of this paper is to illustrate the objective method by using factor analysis from subjective data of given basic questionnaires. The method is testing by actual data from a case study of workers’ happiness. The robustness is confirmed from the testing data by multidimensional analysis.

Objectives: The objective of this paper is to report on factor analysis of 60 emotional descriptors adopted from PANAS-X scale for video-watching experience. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Thirty-five university students took part in Kansei evaluation to rate their feelings after having watched 5 video clips as visual stimuli. Factor analysis executed on the data obtained from the evaluation in order to ascertain emotional descriptors that best represent video-watching experience. Findings: Significant emotional descriptors are successfully ascertained wherein 28 emotional descriptors are retained in 3 factors; rejection, acceptance and ambivalence - that affects video-watching experience the most. The remaining factors can be ignored as the proportion of variability explained is close to zero and they can be considered as insignificant. It is also evident from the result that emotional responses are unique and that assessing video-watching experience shall require sets of emotional descriptors that best describe the field. Application/Improvements: With this result, the academia and other stakeholders shall gain benefit in understanding emotional response pertaining to video-watching experience and how the content influence this response in general.

We were involved in development of a small lander for low-price and usability. The free fall type hadal zone research lander called “Edokko No.1” consists of 3 glass spheres and wireless connectable rubber bridge, and an observation equipment and levitation transponder device can be installed in the glass sphere. A continuous monitoring operation of periodic variations of surrounding ecosystem at deep-seabed is essential for acquiring baseline data and knowledge towards proposal of an appropriate methodology for underwater environmental impact assessment. In the demonstration test in 2013, the video of the hadal zone at the depth of 7800m has been acquired. By the bate trap survey, to observe the amphipods and a hadal fish (Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis). We will demonstrate the transition of deep-sea ecosystem. Time-lapse observation of the seabed is useful to an understanding of the seabed environment.

This paper discusses non-linearity in KANSEI evaluation data and attempts to better understand non-linear relationships between design attributes. Conventionally, the basis of KANSEI analysis has been multivariate analyses and linear modeling. These methods have proven unreliable and problematic. Non-linearity may be typically represented by the interaction between design elements, which often is represented as multicollinearity. To better understand such interactions, a method is proposed that expresses the effect of combining multiple design elements, and uses 'f-then' rules in conjunction with decision trees. The method is also described for constructing these decision trees by using genetic algorithms (GA). Our concern is to consider the adequateness of the proposed method for analyses of non-linear KANSEI data. Two actual examples are shown in order to investigate this problem. An example of KANSEI experiment on interior automobile space is used to examine divided partitions as tree representations. Another illustration of canned coffee design shows a comparison between the results of our method and quantification type I. We can conclude from these examples such that the proposed method indicates in more detailed rules and a deeper understanding of information extracted from KANSEI evaluation data.

本論文では, 事例から人間の状況判断知識を獲得する手法を提案し, 自動車運転時の危険予測知識の学習に応用する. 提案手法は, 属性で記述されたサンプルを適切なクラスに分類するために, 決定木を用いて知識のルール化を行う. 決定木の学習には遺伝的アルゴリズムを用いた決定木学習アルゴリズムGAD (Genetic Algorithm based Decision Tree Learning) を用いる. GADは実装時に起こるデータ数の不足やデータ分布の偏りに影響されにくい高い汎化能力を有する. 提案手法を一般道路における自動車運転時の危険判断知識の獲得に応用し, 手法の有効性について検討する. この事例は, 運転者の視覚的情報に基づき, 運転状況を属性によって定義づけ, 属性値から危険判断を行うものである. 運転状況は, 自動車, 歩行者および動的・静的障害物をオブジェクトとし, その速度や位置によって定義づける. 本研究では, 判断知識の獲得のため, 実際の運転状況に即した属性定義, 状況におけるオブジェクトの順位付けアルゴリズム, 訓練事例による決定木の学習を行う. 学習結果に基づき, 訓練事例として必要な事例数, 分類精度, 得られた決定木のサイズ等について考察する. また, ある特定の状況を想定し, 人間が判断した知識と提案手法で得られた知識を比較し考察する.

In this study, Ln x (SiO4)6O(1.5x−12) (Ln: Nd, La) materials as electrolytes for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) were prepared by the sol-gel process. It has been reported that the apatite structure of Ln x (SiO4)6O(1.5x−12) shows higher ionic conductivity than yttrium-stabilized zirconium oxide at the working temperature of the SOFC. Ln10(SiO4)6O3 is a major component of the Ln x (SiO4)6O(1.5x−12) system. Ln10(SiO4)6O3 consists of Ln9.33(SiO4)6O2 and a small amount of Ln2SiO5. It has been proposed that the ionic conductivity of Ln x (SiO4)6O(1.5x−12) decreases with increasing Ln2SiO5 with non-apatite structure. The object of the present study was to bring about this decrease by generating Ln2SiO5 in the system. Precursor solutions for synthesis of the powder were prepared using tetraethoxysilane (Si(OC2H5)4) and neodymium acetate monohydrate (Nd(CH3COO)3·H2O) or lanthanum acetate monohydrate (La (CH3COO)3·H2O) as raw materials and acetic acid (CH3COOH), 2-methoxyethanol (C2H5OCH2CH2OH), and triethanolamine (N(CH2CH2OH)3) as solvents. To obtain the powder, the solution was dried and heat-treated at 600 °C for 2 h. Disks made from the powder were heat-treated at temperatures between 1100 and 1500 °C for 10 h. The results of an XRD investigation indicate that almost all diffraction peaks of these samples could be assigned to Ln9.33(SiO4)6O2. The sample with x = 10.00 included a small amount of Ln2SiO5. The ionic conductivity of this latter sample was higher than that of other samples with similar values of x (x = 9.33 and 10.67).

The compositional dependence of glass-forming tendency and thermal properties was investigated for the P2O5–TeO2–ZnO system with the aid of an automatic sample preparation system including a batch-preparing apparatus and a multi-sample casting machine. The samples exhibited a variety of colors, such as transparent, yellow, wine red and brown depending on composition. Analyses with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed that the reddish coloration results from a colloidal suspension of nanometer-sized elemental Te particles.

Photoluminescence from a two-dimensional electron-gas system in GaAs single hetero-structures was investigated using a scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) operated at cryogenic temperatures under high magnetic fields. The local intensity of the luminescence increased 600-fold that at 0 T as the magnetic field was increased up to 6 T. The enhancement depended on the spatial resolution of the SNOM. These characteristics are explained by the suppression of the diffusion of photocarriers caused by the Lorentz force in magnetic fields.

We explore an accretion origin for ω Cen by N-body modeling of the orbital decay and disruption of a Milky Way dwarf satellite. This work is focused on studying a particular satellite model that aims to reproduce the present orbit of ω Cen, as recently determined from absolute proper motions. The model satellite is launched from 58 kpc from the Galactic center, on a radial low-inclination orbit. We find that a capture scenario can produce an ω Cen-like object with the current low-energy orbit of the cluster. Our best model is a nucleated dwarf galaxy with a Hernquist density profile that has a mass of 8 × 109 M☉ and a half-mass radius of 1.4 kpc.

In this study, we prepared SrxBa1 − xNb2O6 (x = 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7) thin film on 0.75 wt% La doped SrTiO3 (100) and (110) single crystal substrates. A homogeneous coating solution was prepared with Sr and Ba acetates and Nb(OEt)5 as raw materials, and acetic acid and diethlene glycol monomethyl ether as solvents. The substrates were coated with the solution by spin coating method. As-coated thin films were heated from 973 to 1273 K in air. The grains of the thin film on La doped SrTiO3 (100) were pillar shaped and arranged in right angle to each other. On the other hand, the grains of these thin films on La doped SrTiO3 were pillar shape and arranged in one direction. The crystallographic relationship of the thin film between SrxBa1 − xNb2O6 and substrate that the 〈130〉 and 〈310〉 direction of the thin film on the substrate were oriented with c-axis in parallel to the substrate surface. On the other hand, (hk0) phase diffractions of SrxBa1 − xNb2O6 thin film on the substrate (110) were investigated in the XRD theta-2theta measurement. It is expected that the SrxBa1 − xNb2O6 (x = 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7) were highly oriented or epitaxial growing on La doped SrTiO3 (110) single crystal substrate.

We prepared epitaxial growth SrRuO3 thin film on LaAlO3 (001) (LAO) single crystal substrate and highly oriented BaTiO3 ferroelectric thin film on the epitaxial SrRuO3 thin film. A homogeneous precursor solution for preparing SrRuO3 thin film was prepared with Sr(O—i—C3H7)2 and Ru(NO)(NO3)3 as starting materials, and 2-methoxy ethanol as solvents. The as-coated thin films were heat treated at temperatures from 723 to 1273 K for 1 h in air. SrRuO3 grew epitaxially on LAO(001) substrate, which were confirmed by XRD theta-2theta method and XRD pole figure analysis. The crystallographic relationship of the film and substrate was SrRuO3(001) parallel to LAO(001) and SrRuO3[110] parallel to LAO[100]. A homogeneous precursor solution for preparing BaTiO3 thin film was prepared with Ti[O—n—(CH2)3CH3]4 and Ba(OCOCH3)2 as starting materials, and acetic acid, 2-methoxy ethanol. SrRuO3 coated LAO substrates were coated by spin-coating method with the coating solution. The as-coated thin films were heat treated at temperatures from 973 to 1173 K in air. It was confirmed that the thin films were growing orientated for c-axis by measurement of XRD theta-2theta method.

Multi-scale interaction between the LMC, Galactic halo, and the disk is examined with N-body simulations, and precise amplitudes of the Galactic warp excitation are obtained. The Galactic models are constructed most realistically to satisfy available observational constraints on the local circular velocity, the mass, surface density and thickness of the disk, the mass and size of the bulge, the local density of the halo matter at the solar radius, and the mass and orbit of the LMC. By using hybrid algorithm (SCF-TREE) I have succeeded to follow the evolution with millions of particles. The orbiting satellite excites density enhancement as a wake, and the wake exerts a tidal force on the disk. Because of the additional torque from the wakes in the halo, the amplitudes of the induced warps are much larger than the classical estimate by [hunt1969], who considered only the direct torque from the LMC. The obtained amplitudes of m=0, 1, 2 warps in the larger halo model show very good agreement with the observed amplitude in the Milky Way. This result revives the LMC as a possible candidate of the origin of the Galactic warp. Our smaller halo model, however, yield only weak warps in all the harmonic modes. Therefore the halo still has significant influence on excitation of warp even in the interaction scenario for excitation of warps., Comment: 36 pages, including 20 EPS figures. Final revision for the publication

Epitaxially grown Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 (PZT) thin films have been successfully prepared by the coating photolysis process using ArF excimer laser at room temperature. Starting materials lead-2-ethylhexanoate, zirconium-2-ethylhexanoate oxide and titanium-2-ethyl-1-hexanolate were mixed and diluted with toluene, spin-coated on the single crystal SrTiO 3 (STO)(0 0 1) substrate and dried at 150 °C. When dried films were irradiated by ArF excimer laser at a fluence of 50–80 mJ/cm 2 at a repetition rate of 10 Hz for 1 min (600 shots), epitaxially PZT perovskite phase films were obtained. Single crystal LaAlO 3 (LAO)(0 0 1) and quartz were also used as the substrate, PZT thin films which were grown on STO showed best crystallinity.

We analyzed the effect of a sound speed structure near the ocean surface on sound propagation in a deep sound channel in the ocean by ocean acoustic tomography (OAT), using the normal mode theory. The time structure of the received pulse train in the deep sound channel varies according to the sound speed structure near the ocean surface. In the analysis of the inverse problem in OAT, attention must be paid to the sound speed structure near the ocean surface in the ocean area of interest.

Ba(Ti1-xZrx)O3 thin films have been synthesized on the titanium substrates at 160°C by hydrothermal method. The surface roughness (Ra) of the film was 0.096μm. The molar ratio of Zr/Ti of the film analyzed by EDS was 0.25/0.75. The film microstructure depended strongly on both starting materials and KOH concentration. The grain size became larger from approximately 0.6 to 1μm with increasing KOH concentration from 1×10-3 to 3.5×10-3mol·m-3 at am aqueous solution of 7.8×10-5mol·m-3. The Ba(Ti0.75Zr0.25)O3 thin film synthesized in an aqueous solution of 7.8×10-5mol·m-3 containing 3.5×10-3mol·m-3 KOH showed a dielectric constant of about 426 and dielectric loss of about 0.077 at 1kHz. The transition point between the ferroelectric and paraelectric phases of the film heat-treated at 300°C for 0.5h was approximately 10°C.

A polycrystalline Pb((Zr, Ti)O3/ (Pb, Sr) ((Zr, Ti)O3 (PZT/PSZT) multilayer films have been synthesized on a titanium substrate by hydrothermal method in order to increase the density. This method consisted of two steps of hydrothermal reaction. The first step was the fabrication of a PSZT layer on the titanium substrate at 160°C for 12 h. The second step was the fabrication of PZT layer on the PSZT layer at 130°C for 4 h. The density, the breakdown electric field and young's modulus of the PZT/PSZT multilayer were 7.2g·cm-3, 6.7 V·μm-1 and 7.1×1010 N·m-2, respectively. These values were larger than those of PZT/PZT multilayer.

New methods are shown for lower temperature preparation of amorphous tungsten oxide thin film and preparation of crystalline iridium oxide thin film by sol–gel process using metal chloride as the starting materials and ethanol as a solvent. These electrochromic materials were combined with gel solid electrolyte, and preparation of fully solid-state electrochromic display (ECD) was made. The transmittance of the ECD could be made to change by 35% by applying a voltage of 3 V for 0.2 sec.