A method for controlling a surgical device is provided. The method includes manipulating the surgical device to perform a procedure on a patient; determining whether a relationship between an anatomy of the patient and a position, an orientation, a velocity, and/or an acceleration of a surgical tool of the surgical device corresponds to a desired relationship between the anatomy and the position, the orientation, the velocity, and/or the acceleration of the surgical tool; and imposing a constraint on the surgical device if the relationship does not correspond to the desired relationship and/or a detection device is unable to detect a position of the anatomy and/or the position of the surgical tool.

Method and apparatus for controlling a haptic device

An electric power-steering device has a speed-reducing mechanism (17) for reducing the speed of an output shaft (16) of an electric motor (15). The speed-reducing mechanism (17) has an internal gear (39) engaged and rotated with the output shaft (16) and an external gear (40) with which the internal gear (39) internally meshes. A drive pulley (41) rotatable together with the external gear (40) and a driven pulley (42) provided so as to surround a steering shaft are connected by an endless belt (43). Speed reduction is obtained by the internal gear (39) and the external gear (40), and the speed-reducing mechanism (17) as a whole achieves a high reduction ratio without greatly reducing the diameter of the drive pulley (41).

Electric power-steering device

A vacuum cleaner includes an electric air blower; a dust separator placed at an upstream side of the electric air blower and having a filtration filter for taking in dust-containing air sucked by the electric air blower and separating the dust from the air; and a dust accommodating section for accommodating the dust separated by the dust separator. The filtration filter includes a plurality of through-holes penetrating from an upstream surface at an upstream side to a downstream surface at the downstream side, and a central axis of the through-hole is inclined with respect to a normal line direction of a surface of the filtration filter.

Electric vacuum cleaner

There are provided a magnetoresistance effect element, a magnetic head, a magnetic head assembly and a magnetic recording system, which have high sensitivity and high reliability. The magnetoresistance effect element has two ferromagnetic layers, a non-magnetic layer provided between the ferromagnetic layers, and a layer containing an oxide or nitride as a principal component, wherein the layer containing the oxide or nitride as the principal component contains a magnetic transition metal element which does not bond to oxygen and nitrogen and which is at least one of Co, Fe and Ni.

Magnetoresistance effect element

A control system for a mobile robot ( 10 ) is provided to effectively cover a given area by operating in a plurality of modes, including an obstacle following mode ( 51 ) and a random bounce mode ( 49 ). In other embodiments, spot coverage, such as spiraling ( 45 ), or other modes are also used to increase effectiveness. In addition, a behavior based architecture is used to implement the control system, and various escape behaviors are used to ensure full coverage.

Method and system for multi-mode coverage for an autonomous robot

A device for detecting a load torque using angle detectors fitted with a certain spacing on a shaft which is rotated by a drive source and on the basis of a relative angular difference of angles detected by the angle detectors. The device includes two rotary drums or discs fitted with a certain spacing on the drive side and load side of the shaft, with a plurality of magnetic poles for generating magnetic signals being formed on the surface thereof, and a magnetic sensor disposed to confront the surface of the rotary drums or discs, with magnetic resistance effect elements which vary in internal resistance in response to the magnetism of the magnetic poles being provided thereon. The amount of torsion created by the load on the load side of the rotary shaft is measured as a phase difference of outputs of the magnetic sensor, and the torque is detected in terms of the angular difference between the magnetic drums or discs. The device is operative to detect a torque in both storage and rotation, and capable of detection within a period of magnetic signal, whereby high-accuracy, high-resolution torque detection is made possible.

Torque detecting apparatus

Method and apparatus for operating a vacuum cleaner in which by detecting a rotational speed of a variable speed fan motor adapted to give a suction force to the cleaner and its change range, the choking state of the filter and the state of the cleaned surface are discriminated, and a speed command of the fan motor is corrected on the basis of the result of the discrimination, and the comfortable cleaning can be performed by the optimum suction force.

Method and apparatus for operating vacuum cleaner

A permanent magnet electric machine such as, for example, a motor or generator, including a permanent magnet field member, an armature having salient magnetic poles and armature windings. A greatest common division of the number of magnetic poles of the field member and the salient magnetic poles having the armature windings differs from the number of magnetic poles. A group of grooves is formed between the salient magnetic poles having an interval of 2/3Mπ, with M being an integer which is not a multiple of three. To reduce the occurrence of cogging torque, auxiliary grooves are provided on the surface of the salient poles at positions which are spaced apart from positions of the grooves by (π/3)K+(π/6), in terms of electrical angle, with K being an integer.

Permanent magnet electrical machine with reduced cogging

This specification discloses inventions of a rotation detecting device for a rotary shaft and of a rotation controlling apparatus using this rotation detecting device. The rotation detecting device according to the invention comprises a signal generator for generating two signals vary their amplitude in accordance with the rotation angle of the rotary shaft and have a predetermined phase difference therebetween, part for correcting the respective center voltages output from the signal generator, part for correcting a deviation from the phase deviation between the two signals, and part for correcting the rotating amounts of the rotary shaft on the basis of the corrected two signal. The rotating amounts are represented in terms of rotating angles. A rotating torque can be obtained by calculating a difference between the rotating angles measured at two points apart from each other on the rotary shaft. The rotary shaft can be controlled in accordance with the rotating angle or the rotating torque.

Device for detecting rotation of rotary shaft and rotation controlling apparatus using the same

In a vacuum cleaner, both static pressure Hdata and a variation width ΔH in the static pressure appearing when a suction port is operated are detected from a pressure sensor provided at a rear side of a filter within a main body of the vacuum cleaner; a current variation width Δpbi appearing when the suction port is operated is detected from a current of a nozzel motor for driving a rotary brush stored in a power brush suction port; an air quantity at the suction port is calculated from the current, rotational speed of a fan motor and static pressure; command values are newly obtained by performing a fuzzy calculation with the variation width Δpbi, static-pressure command value Hcmd; the variation width ΔH and the static-pressure command value Qcmd; the variation width Δpbi and static-pressure command value Hcmd; and also the variation width ΔH and static-pressure command value Qcmd as the input thereto; the rotational speeds of the fan motor and nozzel motor are controlled from the result of the command values; and further optimum air suction force is automatically obtained, depending upon the suction port under use and cleaning floor plane.

Kunio Miyashita

Papers

Torque detecting apparatus

Method and apparatus for operating vacuum cleaner

Permanent magnet electrical machine with reduced cogging

Device for detecting rotation of rotary shaft and rotation controlling apparatus using the same

Vacuum cleaner with fuzzy logic control