Noriaki Mitsunaga

The scientifical experiment teaching materials handled at school have a lot of definition reactions and have few quantity experiments. But it is important to raise the thinking power and be considered from an obtained experimental result. In this study, the performance of a simple handmade colorimeter which can be easily used as the teaching materials was estimated by determination of content of starch in powder sugar. Our colorimeter was composed of LED and photoresistor. Three devices were constructed and used for the quantitative analysis. The obtained values of the content of starch were compared each other and no significant error was observed. The amount of starch in commercial powder sugar was almost the same as the value determined by UV-visible spectrophotometer. Therefore, the simple handmade colorimeter was useful for the class of the science and the home economics at school.

タブレット端末が普及するにともない，パソコンではなくタブレット上でのプログラミング環境も増えつつある．最近ではマイクロコントローラあるいはマイクロコンピュータを省略してマイコンとよばれる1チップから数チップで計算機を構築できるコンピュータが，家電，車といった製品の中だけでなく，趣味の電子工作や学校でのプログラミングの学習にも使われている．しかし，そのプログラミングに使えるタブレット端末上のビジュアルプログラミング環境はみあたらない．もし，そのような環境があればマイコンや電子工作に親しむ層が増えると期待される．ところで，マイコンにインタプリタを載せればプログラミング環境にコンパイラは不要であり，デバッグ情報をインタプリタから提供すれば，タブレット端末のような資源の限られたコンピュータでもプログラムの動作状態やマイコンの入出力といった情報を表示するプログラミング環境を実現しやすい．そこで，マイコンにインタプリタを搭載し，そのプログラムを開発するタブレット端末用ビジュアルプログラミング環境aiBlocksを実現したので，初めてプログラミングと電子工作に取り組んだ初心者によるaiBlocksの評価とともに報告する．In recent years, tablet PCs are becoming popular and number of visual programming environments on them are increasing. Meanwhile, micro controllers, small computers that consist of single or a few ICs, are becoming popular among hobyists and programming education. We beleive that a visual programming environment to build a micro controller program on a tablet PC makes more pepole to familar with micro controllers and electronical circuits. However, no such visual programming environment on tablet PC has been published as far as we know. Then, we have developed such an environment named "aiBlocks" on Android OS. In this paper, we report how we developed aiBlocks and how beginners used it.

学校での理科教育では棒温度計や可動コイル形電圧計・電流計といった計器が広く用いられている．一方で表示自由度の高い液晶等の表示パネルの価格が低下し利用しやすくなったことから，そういった計器の表示の置き換えが学校外では進んでいる．現在，タブレット端末が学校へも普及しつつある．タブレット端末の表示自由度は従来の計器よりも高い．本研究では，その特長を活かし，数値，アナログメータ，棒温度計を模擬，グラフ（オシロスコープ）形式による表示を実現するiTesterを開発したので報告する．本報告では，まずiTesterの開発経緯を述べる．そして，実際の小中学校での利用結果から，表示器としてのタブレット端末の利用が1）視認性の面で従来の計器よりも学校教育現場に適していること，2）従来より精度の高い測定の可能性と，3）教育の質的な変化をもたらす可能性を報告し，支援学校での利用結果から，4）計器のユニバーサルデザインの実現について報告する．

In this paper, we report the importance of the reactive behaviors of humanoid robots against human actions for smooth communication. We hypothesize that the reactive behaviors of robots play an important role in achieving human-like communication between humans and robots since the latter need to be recognized by the former as communication partners. To evaluate this hypothesis, we conducted psychological experiments in which we presented subjects with four types of reactive behaviors resulting from pushing a wheeled inverted-pendulum-type humanoid robot. From the experiment, we found that subject's impressions to the robot regarding extroversion and neuroticism changed by the robot's reactive behaviors. We also discuss the reasons for such changes in impressions by comparing the robot's and human reactive behavior.

In the near future, robots are expected to actively participate in our daily lives. Once this time arrives, they will need to be socially accepted by people in various communities. However, the issues remain unknown that must be solved to make robots socially accepted. We have conducted a long-term experiment that a communication robot interacts people daily in an office. From the questionaire answers for the experiment, we have found that three fundamental issues, offering familiarity, reading the situation, and playing a social role, are required for a robot that is socially accepted. In this paper, we propose a hypothesis that three fundamental issues must be fulfilled by a socially accepted robot. Then, we tested our hypothesis through a six-week experiment in an office. We present the details of the experimental results and discuss what is the most important issue among them for a socially accepted robot.

Humans always sway their body when they are standing. Since the swaying is natural for human, they are not conscious of the swaying. However, today, almost all robots are designed to reduce the swaying to ensure stabilities. If communication robots can control the swaying appropriately, it might help humans to anthropomorphize the robot. In this paper, we evaluate how the swaying of a humanoid robot affects human swaying and their impressions. We measured human and robot's neck movement and asked them to answer a questionnaire after the experiments. We discovered that human swaying and impressions were affected by the robot's swaying. Human swaying is always observed whenever communications are performed. In order to apply the swaying to humanoid robots, we only use wheel control. Additionally, we can make the robot's swaying and do other actions on their upper bodies. So the result of this paper will explain how to make robots' swaying.

We believe that humanoids will take an active part in our daily lives in the near future as important media, since a human-size humanoid enables people to more easily accept a sense of humanlike expressions or emotions, wishes, and so forth in addition to capabilities of other media, such as the ability to collect and provide information from the Internet and via ubiquitous sensors connected through a network. Once this time arrives, humanoids will be expected to have the social skills necessary for interacting with people in addition to the ability to carry out their own tasks. We call an interaction that increases familiarity and makes communication smoother a “social interaction.” We have recently developed a human-size humanoid, called “Robovie-IV.” Robovie-IV features interaction abilities such as the ability to chat vocally, which are intended to be “social interactions.” Using Robovie-IV we have conducted an experiment in which it interacts with people in an everyday office environment. This paper discusses the design requirements of Robovie-IV and introduces an overview of its hardware and software architectures. Then, the experimental results, discussions, and conclusions are presented.

When humans interact in a social context, there are many factors apart from the actual communication that need to be considered. Previous studies in behavioral sciences have shown that there is a need for a certain amount of personal space and that different people tend to meet the gaze of others to different extents. For humans, this is mostly subconscious, but when two persons interact, there is an automatic adjustment of these factors to avoid discomfort. In this paper we propose an adaptation mechanism for robot behaviors to make human-robot interactions run more smoothly. We propose such a mechanism based on policy gradient reinforcement learning, that reads minute body signals from a human partner, and uses this information to adjust interaction distances, gaze meeting, and motion speed and timing in human-robot interaction. We show that this enables autonomous adaptation to individual preferences by the experiment with twelve subjects.

Visual attention is one of the most important issues for a vision guided mobile robot. Methods have been proposed for visual attention control based on information criterion [3] [9] . However, the robot had to stop walking for observation and decision. This paper presents a method which enables observation and decision more efficiently and adaptively while it is walking. The method uses the expected information gain from future observations for attention control and action decision. It also proposes an image compensation method to handle the image changes due to the robot motion. Both are used to estimate observation probabilities from the observation while it is walking and then action probabilities are estimated from a decision tree based on the information criterion. The method is applied to a four legged robot. Discussions on the visual attention control in the method and the future issues are given.

Visual attention is one of the most important issues for a mobile robot to accomplish a given task in complicated environments since the vision sensors bring a huge amount of data. This paper proposes a method of sensor space segmentation for visual attention control that enables efficient observation taking the time needed for observation into account. The efficiency is considered from a viewpoint of not geometrical reconstruction but unique action selection based on information criterion regardless of localization uncertainty. The method is applied to a four legged robot that tries to shoot a ball into the goal. To build a decision tree, a training set is given by the designer, and a kind of off-line learning is performed on the given data set. Discussion on the visual attention control in the method is given and the future issues are shown.

This paper proposes a method for constructing a decision tree and prediction ones of the landmarks that enable a robot with a limited visual angle to make decisions without self-localization in the environment. Since global positioning from the 3-D reconstruction of landmarks is generally time-consuming and prone to errors, the robot makes decisions depending on the appearance of landmarks. By using the decision and the prediction trees based on information criterion, the robot can achieve the task efficiently.