Search results

The aim is to develop a force assistance system for standing‐up which prevents the decreasing of physical strength of the patient by using their remaining physical strength.

The system realizes the standing up motion using the support bar with two degrees of freedom and the bed system which can move up and down. For using the remaining physical strength, our system uses the motion pattern which is based on the typical standing up motion by nursing specialist as control reference.

The assistance system realizes the natural standing up motion by nursing specialist and it is effective to assist the aged person to stand up without reducing their muscular strength.

The first idea is distributed system which controls the support bar and the bed system with coordination among them. The second idea is the combination of force and position control.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a contactless and batteryless loading sensor system that can measure the internal loading of an object structure through several covering materials for structural health monitoring.

The paper proposed an architecture by which two radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are used in the system. It has been difficult to realize sensing by RFID because of the low power supply. To solve the power supply problem, a method using functional distribution of RFID tags of two kinds of RFID for communication and power supply was proposed. One RFID tag is specialized as a power supply for communication of strain loading information through A/D conversion. Another is specialized to supply power for driving the strain gauges bridge circuit.

By using developed system, the measurement of the structural internal loading with 20.0 mm depth was possible through covering materials such as concrete, but also plaster board, flexible boards, silicate calcium board, blockboard, and polystyrene with a resolution performance from 10 × 10⁻⁶ to 40 × 10⁻⁶.

A sensor system was developed using passive RFID, which enables measurement of load‐deformation information inside a structural object. Moreover, the inexpensive wireless, batteryless devices used in this system require little maintenance, and applications for the user interface are also included in the developed system for uniform management of structural health monitoring. The developed system was evaluated in an actual situation using not only concrete but also other materials as covering materials on a structural object.

The venue for this year's ISHM‐Benelux Autumn Conference and ‘table‐top’ display meeting on 12 October will be the Institut Supérieur Industriel de l'Etat, Mons, Belgium.

Following the discussion at our recent Annual General Meeting, a questionnaire was sent out to all members. Almost half of them replied despite the fact that the time allowed for returning the questionnaire had been kept very short. Some members even provided detailed comments.

Evacuation drills should be more realistic and interactive. Focusing on situational and audio-visual realities and scenario-based interactivity, the authors have developed a game-based evacuation drill (GBED) system that presents augmented reality (AR) materials on tablet computers. The paper's current research purpose is to improve visual reality (AR materials) in our GBED system.

The author's approach is to develop a new GBED system that superimposes digital objects [e.g. three-dimensional computer graphics (3DCG) elements] onto real-time vision using a marker-based AR library, a binocular opaque head-mounted display (HMD) and other current easily available technologies.

The findings from a trial experiment are that the new GBED system can improve visual reality and is appropriate for disaster education. However, a few problems remain for practical use.

When using the GBED system, participants (i.e. HMD wearers) can suffer from 3D sickness and have difficulty in moving. These are important safety problems in HMD-based systems.

The combination of AR and HMDs for GBEDs (i.e. integrating virtual and real worlds) will raise questions about its merits (pros and cons).

The originality of the research is the combination of AR and an HMD to a GBED, which has previously been realized primarily as simulation games in virtual worlds. The authors believe that our research has the potential to expand disaster education.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the speed-up of the fixed-point method by updating the reluctivity at each iteration (this is called a modified fixed-point method).

A modified fixed-point method, which updates the derivative of reluctivity at each iteration, is proposed. It is shown that the formulation of the fixed-point method using the derivative of reluctivity is almost the same as that of the Newton-Raphson method. The convergence characteristic of the newly proposed fixed-point method is compared with those of the Newton-Raphson method.

The modified fixed-point method has an advantage that the programming is easy and it has a similar convergence property to the Newton-Raphson method for an isotropic nonlinear problem.

This paper presents the formulation and convergence characteristic of the modified fixed-point method are almost the same as those of the Newton-Raphson method.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the cultural script of the teaching of a lower secondary science lesson on the topic “Classification of Non-living Things” in Singapore through the eyes of Japanese and Singaporean researchers and teachers. In particular, the study analyzes the structural content, i.e. organization of learning activities of a lower secondary science lesson of Singapore and the culture of teaching, i.e. views about teaching held as tacit knowledge of science teachers. It focusses on students’ inquiry skills in a participative and problem-driven science lesson in the Singapore classroom.

This exploratory study adopts a cultural approach of viewing teaching and learning and compares classroom practice in two countries – Japan and Singapore. Contextually, the cultural differences in beliefs and values define how educators learn about what is “good” teaching.

The cultural script of teaching of the science lesson case values the setting of learning tasks that encourage a variety of ideas. It also sets a tone of inquiry-based learning where students are open to questioning, the formulation of ideas and the presentation of solutions. In the science lesson case, the teacher aimed at providing opportunities for students to think for themselves and to engage in group discussion. This study identifies key aspects of the science lesson for revealing the teaching script based on a cross-cultural lesson analysis. Figure 1 summarizes such facets of teacher teaching and student learning in detail as a result of the lesson analysis. Furthermore, it draws attention to recognizing areas of the lesson script which the Japanese team found effective/ineffective as well as identifying the Singaporean team's reflections on feedback from Japanese educators.

Through this study, the research team raises the following questions. Are there common practices that make for effective learning and if so what are these? From the perspectives of Japanese and Singaporean researchers and educators, what might be the different elements of teaching that will bring about better student learning?

An important avenue for inquiry in teaching is how to create teaching-learning processes that nurture students’ ability to deal with the unexpected as well as their application skills – competencies that are required of students to function in the twenty-first century. The research team suggests a cross-cultural analysis approach for future research investigating the cultural script of teaching.

The affectivity is conceptualised in the literary work of phenomenological theories as a significant factor in urban environments studies that are related to change people's feelings. This article aims to present toolkits for creating affective urban atmospheres, which is based on communications between people and place.

To better comprehend the links between the felt body theory and reconstructing affective urban atmospheres in urban environments, this article has performed bibliographic investigations on the sensible approaches and presented Toolkit related to the multi-sensory experience.

This article breaks new ground to discuss the concepts of the felt body, vital drive and daily multi-sensory experience as a contribution to urban studies applications.

This article clarified the possibility of creating affective urban atmospheres through the concepts of affectivity as a process at a pre-design stage.

In conclusion, it is argued that work on multi-sensory experience in urban environments needs to address the felt body and vital drive to become a set of urban studies tools of perceptual dimension.