Takahiro Wada

Hailong Liu, Shota Inoue, Takahiro Wada

Passengers (drivers) of level 3-5 autonomous personal mobility vehicles (APMV) and cars can perform non-driving tasks, such as reading books and smartphones, while driving. It has been pointed out that such activities may increase motion sickness. Many studies have been conducted to build countermeasures, of which various computational motion sickness models have been developed. Many of these are based on subjective vertical conflict (SVC) theory, which describes vertical changes in direction sensed by human sensory organs vs. those expected by the central nervous system. Such models are expected to be applied to autonomous driving scenarios. However, no current computational model can integrate visual vertical information with vestibular sensations. We proposed a 6 DoF SVC-VV model which add a visually perceived vertical block into a conventional six-degrees-of-freedom SVC model to predict VV directions from image data simulating the visual input of a human. Hence, a simple image-based VV estimation method is proposed. As the validation of the proposed model, this paper focuses on describing the fact that the motion sickness increases as a passenger reads a book while using an AMPV, assuming that visual vertical (VV) plays an important role. In the static experiment, it is demonstrated that the estimated VV by the proposed method accurately described the gravitational acceleration direction with a low mean absolute deviation. In addition, the results of the driving experiment using an APMV demonstrated that the proposed 6 DoF SVC-VV model could describe that the increased motion sickness experienced when the VV and gravitational acceleration directions were different.

Tatsuya Sakuma, Takuya Kiyokawa, Jun Takamatsu et al.

For assembly tasks, it is essential to firmly fix target parts and to accurately estimate their poses. Several rigid jigs for individual parts are frequently used in assembly factories to achieve precise and time-efficient product assembly. However, providing customized jigs is time-consuming. In this study, to address the lack of versatility in the shapes the jigs can be used for, we developed a flexible jig with a soft membrane including transparent beads and oil with a tuned refractive index. The bead-based jamming transition was accomplished by discharging only oil enabling a part to be firmly fixed. Because the two cameras under the jig are able to capture membrane shape changes, we proposed a sensing method to estimate the orientation of the part based on the behaviors of markers created on the jig's inner surface. Through estimation experiments, the proposed system could estimate the orientation of a cylindrical object with a diameter larger than 50 mm and an RMSE of less than 3 degrees.

Ryota Nishimura, Takahiro Wada, Seiji Sugiyama

Haptic shared control is expected to achieve a smooth collaboration between humans and automated systems, because haptics facilitate mutual communication. A methodology for sharing a given task is important to achieve effective shared control. Therefore, the appropriate cooperative relationship between a human operator and automated system should be considered. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate the cooperative status between the operator and the automated system in the haptic shared control of a steering operation using a pseudo-power pair of torque from each agent and the vehicle lateral velocity as each agent's contribution to vehicle motion. This method allows us to estimate cooperative status based on two axes: the initiative holder and the intent consistency between the two agents. A control method for a lane-keeping assist system (LKAS) that enables drivers to change lanes smoothly is proposed based on the estimated cooperative status. A gain-tuning control method based on the estimated cooperative status is proposed to decrease the assistance system's pseudo-power when intent inconsistency occurs. A method for switching the followed lane to match the driver's and assistance system's intentions is also proposed. A user study using a driving simulator is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed methods facilitate smooth driver-initiated lane changes without significantly affecting the driver's torque or steering wheel angle while significantly improve lane-keeping performance.