The paper proposes a vision-based system for adaptively inferring the interactional intention of a person coming close to a robot, which plays an important role in the succeeding stage of human/robot cooperative handling of works/tools in production lines. Here, interactional intention is ranged in the meaning of the intention to interact/operate with the robot, which is proposed to be estimated by the human head moving path during an incipient period of time. To implement this intention inference capability, first, human entrance is detected and is modeled by an ellipse to supply information about the head position. Second, B-spline technique is used to approximate the trajectory with reduced control points in order that the system acquires information about the human motion direction and the curvature of the motion trajectory. Finally, Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are applied as the adaptive inference engines at the stage of inferring the human interactional intention. The HMM algorithm with a stochastic pattern matching capability is extended to supply whether or not a person has an intention toward the robot at the incipient time. The reestimation process here models the motion behavior of an human worker when he has or doesn't have the intention to operate the robot. Experimental results demonstrate the adaptability of the inference system using the extended HMM algorithm for filtering out motion deviation over the trajectory.

Techniques for human-motion recovery are applicable to a variety of areas, such as sports, dancing, virtual reality, and video-game production. The people who work in this area focus their attention on recovering information on the motion of individuals rather than groups of people. It is important to demonstrate the possibility of recovering descriptions of the 3-D motion in team sports, since such information is able to provide us with a variety of information on the relations among players. This paper presents a new experimental result on 3-D motion recovery from a team sport. The result was obtained by a non-rigid shape recovery technique based on images from uncalibrated cameras. The technique was applied to recovering the 3-D motion of the players in a mini-basketball game which was played in a gymnasium. Some attention is focused on the analysis of the players' motion. Satisfactory results were obtained.

In this paper, a novel adaptive digital watermarking approach based upon human visual system model and fuzzy clustering technique is proposed. The human visual system model is utilized to guarantee that the watermarked image is imperceptible. The fuzzy clustering approach has been employed to obtain the different strength of watermark by the local characters of image. In our experiments, this scheme allows us to provide a more robust and transparent watermark.

A low loss magnetic plate positioned near an antenna is proposed to increase radiation efficiency of cellular phones. This magnetic plate is used to control the nearby magnetic field around the cellular phone's antenna, and this field controlling is shown to be effective for the improvement of radiation efficiency and far-field pattern. As for the material design of the plate, a magnetic plate having high µr and low µr" (complex relative permeability: µr = µr - j µr") is found to be effective for achieving high performance. In our sample fabrication, a low loss magnetic sample with µr = 5.7 - j 0.7 at 900 MHz is realized. It is demonstrated that this low loss sample contributes to increased efficiency and improved far-field characteristics.

Modern cryptology was born in the late seventies and developed in the eighties. A decade since 1991 is the period of continuation of the development and new expansion of cryptology. In this paper we survey the development of cryptologic researches in this decade with emphasis on the results in Japan. We also present some future important works and propose the foundation of a public institution for evaluation of information security techniques.

In this study, the shielding effect of high-loss dielectric and magnetic materials themselves and also an oval human model placed behind these material, were investigated by the FDTD method, for near- and far-field exposure, using the half-wave length dipole antenna. According to the results, a high-loss magnetic material showed a large shielding effect (average 20 dB) compared to the high-loss dielectric material, for near- and far-field shields. Also, the reduction of the shielding effect was small (2 dB) for the high-loss magnetic material, while it was large for the high loss dielectric material, on decreasing the distance between the antenna and shield. Moreover, the variation of the shielding effect on a human model placed behind the shield was small (0.2-1.5 dB) for the high-loss magnetic material, but large for the high-loss dielectric material. This is similar to the results of the shield materials themselves, for the close antenna-shield and human-shield distances, respectively.

A low bit-rate encoding method which yields a good performance in edge reconstruction while achieving a high compression is proposed through MTF function and the spatial anisotropy of human vision. Human visual weighting factors applied to sub-blocks within each subband in wavelet domain are produced by the spatial anisotropic-filter, then a good perceptual performance can be obtained.

This article shows a Boolean Multivalued logical model of varying confirmation by observation of events in human inference and, as an introductory example, applies the model to solve Hempel's paradox of the ravens.

This paper discusses the characteristics of human design knowledge. By studying a number of actual human made designs of excellent designers, the most frequent basic mental operations of a typical human designer have been found. They are: a design rule for hierarchical detailing reported previously, a micro design rule for generating a hierarchical expansion, dictionary operations to build a micro design rule and dictionaries. This study assumes a multiplicity of knowledge based on Zipf's theory, "the principle of least effort. " Zipf's principle may be proved and it becomes possible to understand the fundamental nature of human design.

The interaction between the human eye and electromagnetic (EM) waves in the ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) frequency bands is investigated with the use of the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. In order to assess possible health hazards, the specific absorption rates (SARs) are calculated and compared with the recommended safety standards. In particular, we calculate temperature rises in the human eye to assess the possibility of microwave-induced cataract formation. The results show that the maximum values of averaged SARs are less than the standard levels. In addition, we observed what is called the 'hot spot' in the region of eye humor at 2.4 GHz but not at 900 MHz and 5.8 GHz. Furthermore, the maximum temperature rise due to the incident EM power density of 5.0 mW/cm2, which is the MPE (maximum permissible exposure) limit for controlled environments, has been found to be at most 0.26 at 5.8 GHz, which is small compared with the threshold temperature rise 3.0 for cataract formation.

Texture has been investigated as a cue for reconstructing 3-D structure. There are various textures in a natural scene. In this paper, the regularity of alignment of texture elements was manipulated to investigate its effect on human perception. The results show that the regularity affects human perception when only the texel density gradient is given as cue or the density cue is inconsistent with the compression cue. We introduce a model based on a MAP estimation to account for the result from a viewpoint of an integration of 3-D cues. The model simultaneously estimates texture properties and 3-D surface orientation by using prior knowledge about texture and 3-D surface. The performance of the model accounts for the experimental result well.

In this paper, we propose methods for testing the usability of graphical user interface (GUI) applications based on log files of user interactions. Log analysis by existing methods is not efficient because evaluators analyze a single log file or log files of the same user and then manually compare results. The methods proposed here solve this problem; the methods enable evaluators to analyze the log files of multiple users together by detecting interaction patterns that commonly appear in the log files. To achieve the methods, we first clarify usability attributes that can be evaluated by a log-based usability testing method and user interaction patterns that have to be detected for the evaluation. Based on an investigation on the information that can be obtained from the log files, we extract the attributes of clarity, safety, simplicity, and continuity. For the evaluations of clarity and safety, the interaction patterns that have to be detected include those from user errors. We then propose our methods for detecting interaction patterns from the log files of multiple users. Patterns that commonly appear in the log files are detected by utilizing a repeating pattern detection algorithm. By regarding an operation sequence recorded in a log file as a string and concatenating strings, common patterns are able to be detected as repeating patterns in the concatenated string. We next describe the implementation of the methods in a computer tool for log-based usability testing. The tool, GUITESTER, records user-application interactions into log files, generates usability analysis data from the log files by applying the proposed methods, and visualizes the generated usability analysis data. To show the effectiveness of GUITESTER in finding usability problems, we report an example of a usability test. In this test, evaluators could find 14 problems in a tested GUI application. We finally discuss the ability of the proposed methods in terms of its log analysis efficiency, by comparing the analysis/sequence time (AT/ST) ratio of GUITESTER with those of other methods and tools. The ratio of GUITESTER is found to be smaller. This indicates the methods make log analysis more efficient.

In this article we present a survey of medical image processing with the stress on applications of image generation and pattern recognition / understanding to computer aided diagnosis (CAD) and surgery (CAS). First, topics and fields of research in medical image processing are summarized. Second the importance of the 3D image processing and the use of virtualized human body (VHB) is pointed out. Thirdly the visualization and the observation methods of the VHB are introduced. In the forth section the virtualized endoscope system is presented from the viewpoint of the observation of the VHB with the moving viewpoints. The fifth topic is the use of VHB with deformation such as the simulation of surgical operation, intra-operative aids and image overlay. In the seventh section several topics on image processing methodologies are introduced including model generation, registration, segmentation, rendering and the use of knowledge processing.

This paper addresses the important issue of estimating realistic grasping postures, and presents a methodology and algorithm to automate the generation of hand and body postures during the grasp of arbitrary shaped objects. Predefined body postures stored in a database are generalized to adapt to a specific grasp using inverse kinematics. The reachable space is represented discretely dividing into small subvolumes, which enables to construct the database. The paper also addresses some common problems of articulated figure animation. A new approach for body positioning with kinematic constraints on both hands is described. An efficient and accurate manipulation of joint constraints is presented. Obtained results are quite satisfactory, and some of them are shown in the paper. The proposed algorithms can find application in the motion of virtual actors, all kinds of animation systems including human motion, robotics and some other fields such as medicine, for instance, to move the artificial limbs of handicapped people in a natural way.

This paper proposes and investigates a coding and decoding scheme to achieve adaptive unequal error protection (UEP) using several convolutional codes which have different error-correcting capabilities. An appropriate encoder is selected to unequally protect each frame of information sequence according to the importance of the frame. Since the supplemental information of selected encoder is not sent for the sake of reducing redundancy, we assume that the decoder does not know which encoder was used, and the decoder has to estimate the used encoder. In order to estimate which encoder was used, the method using biased metric in Viterbi decoding is proposed. In decoding, however, there is a problem of Decoder-Selection-Error (DSE), which is an error that the decoder selected in a receiver does not correspond to the encoder used in a transmitter. An upper bound of DSE rate in decoding is derived. The proposed decoding scheme using the biased metric in a trellis can improve DSE rate and BER performance, because transition probability of encoders is taken into account in calculating likelihood by means of making branch or path metric biased. Computer simulation is employed to evaluate the BER performance and DSE rate of the proposed scheme. The performance is compared with a conventional equal error protection scheme and a UEP with the supplemental information on the used encoder. It is found that the proposed scheme can achieve better performance than them in case N=2.

In this paper we propose a method to aid a visually impaired person in the operation of a computer running a graphical user interface (GUI). It is based on image processing techniques, using images taken by a color camera placed over a Braille display. The shape of the user's hand is extracted from the image by analyzing the hue and saturation histograms. The orientation of the hand, given by an angle θ with the vertical axis, is calculated based on central moments. The image of the hand is then rotated to a normalized position. The number of pixels in each column of the normalized image is counted, and the result is put in a histogram. By analyzing the coefficient of asymmetry of this histogram, it can be determined whether the thumb is positioned along the pointing finger, or whether it is far from the other fingers. These two positions define two states that correspond to a mouse button up or down. In this way, by rotating the hand and moving the thumb, we can emulate the acts of moving a scroll bar and depressing a mouse button, respectively. These operations can be used to perform tasks in a GUI, such as cut-and-paste, for example. Experimental results show that this method is fast and efficient for the proposed application.

In order to investigate the nonlinearity and color responses of visual evoked potentials (VEPs), which have been useful in objectively detecting human color vision characteristics, a nonlinear system identification method was applied to VEPs elicited by isoluminant color stimuli, and the relationship between color stimuli and VEPs was examined. VEPs of normal subjects elicited by chromatically modulated stimuli were measured, and their binary kernels were estimated. Results showed that a system with chromatically modulated stimuli and VEP responses can be expressed by binary kernels up to the second order and that first- and second-order binary kernels depended on the color of the stimulus. The characteristics of second-order kernels reflected the difference between two chromatic channels. Opponent-color responses were included in first-order binary kernels, suggesting that they could be used as an index to test human color vision.

In this paper, a new method for measuring three-dimensional (3D) moving facial shapes is introduced. This method uses two light sources and a slit pattern projector. First, the normal vectors at points on a face are computed by the photometric stereo method with two light sources and a conventional video camera. Next, multiple light stripes are projected onto the face with a slit pattern projector. The 3D coordinates of the points on the stripes are measured using the stereo vision algorithm. The normal vectors are then integrated within 2D finite intervals around the measured points on the stripes. The 3D curved segment within each finite interval is computed by the integration. Finally, all the curved segments are blended into the complete facial shape using a family of exponential functions. By switching the light rays at high speed, the time required for sampling data can be reduced, and the 3D shape of a moving human face at each instant can be measured.

This study clarifies the effects of network complexity and network map transformation on the ability of network managers to use graphic network displays. Maps of Japan and the United States with outlines of their respective prefectures or states were displayed on a CRT. Each map displayed a fictitious network of nodes and their interconnections. These networks were two-level hierarchical and non-meshed, meaning that each low-level node was connected to a single high-level node, but not all high-level nodes were linked together. The subjects, task was to identify a path between two low-level nodes. In each trial, two low-level nodes were highlighted, and the subject attempted to find the shortest path between these nodes. This was done by using a mouse to select intermediate nodes. Completing a path required a minimum of 4 node traversals. Three variables were manipulated. First, the number of nodes was defined as the total number of low-level nodes in a network (70, 150, or 200). The second variable was the level of transformation. Very densely populated areas of the maps were systematically transformed to reduce congestion. There were three levels of transformation. The final variable was the country map used, that is, the map of Japan and the map of the United States. Several behavioral measures were used. The most informativ. appeared to be the time required to complete a path (the response time), and how often subjects returned to previous portions of a path (back-ups). For both of these measures, the data pattern was essentially the same. Increasing the number of nodes hurts performance. This was particularly pronounced when the map of Japan was tested. However, as the level of transformation increased, this effect was substantially reduced or completely eliminated. The results are discussed in terms of engineering rules and guidelines for designing graphical network representations.

Intending to contribute to constructing better multimedia network systems, we propose a new concept of image database system of which form of storage is featuring exponential or graceful oblivion and abrupt recollection like the human memory property. By virtue of this property of database storages that is realized by employing hierarchical or pyramidal image coding, the database memory and transmission costs can be significantly reduced. In this paper we will describe the details of the concept, the results of theoretical analysis based on a simplified model which reveals the effectiveness of the proposed system, the structure of an experimental prototype system and the result of an experimental image retrieval service carried out by implementing it over ATM high speed channels.