Transactions of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. C 

About: Transactions of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. C is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Vibration & Control theory. It has an ISSN identifier of 0387-5024. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 9635 publications have been published receiving 23696 citations.

Development of a Rodless Type Flexible Pneumatic Cylinder and Its Application

Abstract: Current virtual reality systems are not enough to realize a force feedback system for hands, arms, legs and so on. Furthermore, due to the ageing in Japanese society and the decreasing birthrate, an increasing problem of providing nursing care for the elderly has occurred. As a result, it is necessary to develop systems to aid in nursing care. The actuators required for such systems, need to be flexible so as not to injure the human body. The purpose of our study is to develop a flexible and lightweight actuator which can be safe enough to be mounted on the human body. In this paper, we proposed and tested rodless type of flexible pneumatic cylinder. The cylinder consists of a flexible tube as a cylinder or rod, steel balls as a piston and a duralumin slide stage that has balls and rollers. We investigated the characteristics of the tested cylinder. We also applied the tested cylinder as a rotary actuator of master-slave robot arm. As a result, we found that the tested cylinders had a “self holding function for positioning” under condition of no supply pressure. We confirmed that the tested cylinder was useful to apply as a wearable actuator with the advantages of flexibility, lightweight and easier positioning.

Analysis of Generating Motion for Five-Axis Machining Centers

Abstract: This paper deals with the theoretical investigation of the arrangement of slideways for five-axis machining centers. There is a considerable number of combinations with respect to the five-axis slideways. However, a critical assessment of the possible combinations of slideways has not been performed so far. In this paper, therefore, theoretical investigation of slideways arrangements which can accommodate the five-axis machining center is carried out using the coordinate transforation matrices. In addition to those functional analyses, the method to obtain the theoretical length of slideways, which is necessary for machining a particular workpiece size, is proposed by applying the form-shaping function.

Study on the postural and driving control of a coaxial bicycle.

Abstract: The postural and driving control of a coaxial bicycle which has a twin wheel and an upper structure on its driving axis has been studied. The bicycle is modeled as an inverted pendulum pivoted on the wheel axis. In this study, a controlling moment, that is, a restoring torque on thee inverted pendulum is applied by controlling the rotation of the wheels. A control system of the model has been designed according to the proportional feedback control method, in which feedback gains can be determined by Routh-Hurwitz's stability criteria. Experiments were carried out using these feedback gains and we have succeeded for postural control together with driving control of the coaxial bicycle. It is confirmed experimentally that the feedback gains derived from the analysis are available in the postural control and the vehicle can be driven in an arbitrary direction by altering two proportional gains corresponding to its inclination.

Recognition of Mixed Facial Expressions by Neural Network.

Abstract: Since the facial expressions of human emotions are usually not distinct, the development of a technique for machine recognition of mixed facial expressions is very crucial for the true realization of AHI (active human interface) between machine and human beings. This paper deals with a neural network method for machine recognition by decomposing mixed facial expressions into 2 or 3 components of 6 basic facial expressions. We obtain the images of mixed facial expressions from video tape which recorded continuous change in facial expressions, and using the information of the (x, y) coordinates of facial characteristic points (FCP) for 19 subjects, the neural network is trained. The recognition test is conducted by inputting facial information not used in training the neural network to the trained neural network. The neural network method is found to give a rather high agreement rate of about 70% compared with recognition results obtained by human beings.