Examining How Interaural Differences Owing to Head Rotation during Walking Improve the Distance of Auditory Obstacle Perceptions among Individuals with Visual Impairment: A Case Study in Small-Scale Blind Group.

The ability of individuals with visual impairment to recognize an obstacle by hearing is called "obstacle sense". This ability is facilitated while they are moving, though the exact reason remains unknown. This study aims to clarify which acoustical factors may contribute to obstacle sense, especially obstacle distance perception.

Binaural Listening with Head Rotation Helps Persons with Blindness Perceive Narrow Obstacles.

Orientation and mobility (O&M) are important abilities that people with visual impairments use in their independent performance of daily activities. In orientation, people with total blindness pinpoint nonsounding objects and sounding objects. The ability to perceive nonsounding objects is called , wherein people with blindness recognize the various characteristics of an obstacle using acoustic cues.

A case study of new assessment and training of unilateral spatial neglect in stroke patients: effect of visual image transformation and visual stimulation by using a Head Mounted Display system (HMD).

Background: Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is most damaging to an older stroke patient who also has a lower performance in their activities of daily living or those elderly who are still working. The purpose of this study was to understand more accurately pathology of USN using a new HMD system.

Methods: Two stroke patients (Subject A and B) participated in this study after gaining their informed consent and they all had Left USN as determined by clinical tests.

Standardization of thresholding for binary conversion of vocal tract modeling in computed tomography.

Postoperative head and neck cancer patients suffer from speech disorders, which are the result of changes in their vocal tracts. Making a solid vocal tract model and measuring its transmission characteristics will provide one of the most useful tools to resolve the problem. In binary conversion of X-ray computed tomographic (CT) images for vocal tract reconstruction, nonobjective methods have been used by many researchers.

Artificial organs: recent progress in artificial hearing and vision.

Artificial sensory organs are a prosthetic means of sending visual or auditory information to the brain by electrical stimulation of the optic or auditory nerves to assist visually impaired or hearing-impaired people. However, clinical application of artificial sensory organs, except for cochlear implants, is still a trial-and-error process. This is because how and where the information transmitted to the brain is processed is still unknown, and also because changes in brain function (plasticity) remain unknown, even though brain plasticity plays an important role in meaningful interpretation of new sensory stimuli.

Development of a wearable electro-larynx for laryngectomees and its evaluation.

An electro-larynx is one of speech-substitute devices for patients who have lost laryngeal function. Unfortunately, the voices produced by a conventional electro-larynx are completely flat, unlike a human voice. In order to improve it, we developed a pitch-controlled electro-larynx that allows patients to control a voice intonation using their exhalation.

A preliminary study of MR sickness evaluation using visual motion aftereffect for advanced driver assistance systems.

Mixed Reality (MR) technologies have recently been explored in many areas of Human-Machine Interface (HMI) such as medicine, manufacturing, entertainment and education. However MR sickness, a kind of motion sickness is caused by sensory conflicts between the real world and virtual world. The purpose of this paper is to find out a new evaluation method of motion and MR sickness.

Development of a piezoelectric actuator for presentation of various tactile stimulation patterns to fingerpad skin.

In order to investigate tactile perception characteristics of the human fingerpad for the optimal design of a sensory substitution system, we have developed a small piezoelectric bimorph actuator that possesses flat frequency characteristics in the vibratory frequency of tactilely perceivable bandwidth. The parameters for the design of the bimorph were determined by using a mechanical simulation model of a piezoelectric bimorph and a fingerpad skin. To evaluate the performance of the bimorph, we measured frequency-displacement relationships when the skin of a fingerpad was vibrated by the piezoelectric bimorph.

A preliminary study of clinical assessment of left unilateral spatial neglect using a head mounted display system (HMD) in rehabilitation engineering technology.

Purpose: Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is a common syndrome in which a patient fails to report or respond to stimulation from the side of space opposite a brain lesion, where these symptoms are not due to primary sensory or motor deficits. The purpose of this study was to analyze an evaluation process system of USN in various visual fields using HMD in order to understand more accurately any faults of USN operating in the object-centred co-ordinates.

Method: Eight stroke patients participated in this study and they had Left USN in clinical test, and right hemisphere damage was checked by CT scan.

Effects of an eyeglass-free 3-D display on the human visual system.

Purpose: To investigate the effect on the human visual system of viewing 3-dimensional (3-D) computer graphics (CG) images with an eyeglass-free rear-cross-lenticular-type 3-D display.

Methods: Positive accommodation velocity (GRAD) during the accommodative step response was measured in ten healthy young adults before and after they viewed CG images. Although the distance between the viewer and the 3-D display was 600 mm, the apparent distance between the viewer and the virtual object was varied (515, 600, and 722 mm) by changing the visual disparity.