Article Engineering in General

Evaluation of Revitalization Measures for Central City Areas Considering Changes in Human Flows

In recent years, a declining population and an aging and decline have led to a reduction in the vibrancy and economic activity of the city. Various regional cities have taken measures to revitalize their central city areas. However, they have yet to develop a method to quantify the effects of these measures. In this study, using a device equipped with Internet of Things (IoT), we obtained basic data on the number of visitors before the COVID-19 to quantify pedestrian traffic along Kokusai Street. Our findings revealed that the implementation of revitalization strategies led to a notable increase in the number of individuals visiting the area, as well as in the average duration of their stay. This suggests that the implemented measures have the potential to contribute to the revitalization of the area, thereby fostering the creation of a vibrant town center.

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Article Education Information Sciences Psychology and Education

An Inquiry-Based Learning Support System for Children in Sports Acquisition Processes

This study examined an inquiry-based learning support system for children in sports acquisition processes and describes the characteristics of a case study on the long-term collaborative process of children’s forward and backward cycle practices on horizontal bars. We analyzed 18 horizontal-bar practices for two elementary schoolchildren who had not succeeded in their backward cycle for approximately half a year. They were required to make practice plans collaboratively to succeed in their forward and backward cycles. To support their practices, we provided them with “HDMi (HDMi is the name of a system we developed in the past.),” which was developed to support reflecting on one’s physical movements using movies. The movies were also used for discourse analysis to determine where the children focused, and OpenPose software was used for motion analysis to examine how the children’s actions improved on a horizontal bar. Both the HDMi and the discourse analysis suggested that two children selected their focusing points for their practice and they gradually became referring to “move toes toward opposite side of the bar” in the periods of practices. However, the motion analysis revealed that the focused points and actual movement of the body did not match completely.

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Article Education Interdisciplinary Sciences Psychology

Review matching task to diagnose basic review ability

Software development begins with writing a requirement definition document (RDD) specifying what software is to be built, and the RDD should define the necessary and sufficient conditions the software must satisfy. Preferably, the RDD is reviewed to guarantee its quality. However, the quality of reviews of such documents is not easy to evaluate, due to various review styles and the logical complexity of RDDs. Therefore, we regarded the review ability as the ability to match an RDD with a software and developed a game to make a matching task that can assess review quality. The task has four types of relationships, two-by-two classes of necessity (i.e., the RDD has no irrelevant sentences to define the given software) and sufficiency (i.e., the RDD covers all the parts of the software), between requirements and software, which are expressed in verbal and nonverbal forms. Results suggest that the game likely sufficiently simulated the process of making/reviewing RDD in the requirement definition process. Therefore, it is suggested that the matching task created through the game can be adequate to assess the review ability.

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Special Issue Environmental Sciences Psychology and Education Sociology

The Effects of Positive and Negative Ions on esports Performance and Arousal Levels Part 2 -Testing Higher Ion Density-

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychological effects of higher positive and negative ion conditions on the arousal levels of esports players during a racing game. Participants (10 males) from a collegiate esports team were the participants in the study. The effects of higher concentrations of positive and negative ions were evaluated in a randomized crossover. Each participant performed two experiments four weeks apart; two experimental environments were used: positive and negative ions filling the atmosphere (PNI) condition and a control (CON) condition. A car racing game was employed as the performance task. Arousal was measured by the two-dimensional mood scale (TDMS) and electroencephalogram (EEG). EEG was used to measure arousal. The results showed that the level of arousal in the subjective assessment and the level of arousal in the EEG were significantly higher in the CON condition for PNI. In addition, PNI performed significantly better on the game task than in the CON condition. The present study demonstrated in positive and negative ion environments with higher concentrations than in the previous study, and the results showed higher arousal levels in subjective assessments, indicating that higher concentrations of ionic environments are beneficial for esports players.

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Special Issue Information Sciences

Development of Video Switching System in Sport Fields

In Japan, the Sport Basic Plan was formulated in 2012, which mentions not only the development of highly qualified sports instructors but also new perspectives such as the provision of programs in which everyone can enjoy the value of sports together. Against this background, trials of new technologies utilizing the latest ICT equipment such as sensor devices are being made. However, in college sports, where financial resources are often limited, shooting with hand-held video cameras is the most common method, which may cause the manager to overlook important scenes of play depending on his or her skill level. This problem affects not only competitors but also spectators. To solve this problem, we develop a system for capturing video images of the entire field with multiple fixed video cameras so that the system can automatically switch from one to another video of the most appropriate camera for the respective scenes of play. The results of the demonstration experiments in basketball and futsal showed that the switching video of the proposed technology can be utilized for tactical analysis in sports.

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Secondary Publication Engineering in General Information Sciences

An e-Management Method and Self-Driving Frame of on-Demand-to-Supply Robot Type using Ternary/Pair-Map

Our study on 3M&I-artifacts body looks at the (intangible) problems from the traditional Taylor-style static to dynamic (cock-pit) e-management approaches. Since the invention of pair-map (1983) at profit max, we are attempting to advance the on (moving-space)-management by pair (accelerator, brake) matrix approach. This attempt could be now characterized as the problem of profit max by pair (revenue, cost) method, and would be visualized and digitalized such as such a heliocentric vs. geocentric science as mobile “enterprise x computer” robots of SW (middle initiative) base. Finally, a static vs. moving-space automobile-like case on the pair-typed driving map is graphically given and discussed toward the shedding of classic pair-map at 2-center type since 1983.

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Article Electrical and Electronic Engineering Information Sciences

Development of Sensing Unit “xG-1” for Visualizing Team Plays

The authors have developed "xG-1", a sports sensing unit capable of visualizing the performance and flow of play while recognizing each player in field sports such as soccer, rugby, and American football. Utilization of this sensing unit in the field of sports makes it possible to provide scientific data-driven services with the aim of transforming subjective coaching methods based on experience into new coaching methods based on data. This system consists of sensor devices and software, utilizing real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning, which is a surveying technology. Therefore, the system not only provides highly accurate positional data in real time but also visualizes the overall performance of the entire team, including formation analysis. This allows one-stop management of the overall team and individual performance, as well as efficient information management of the player's exercise load. "xG-1" can support sports businesses by providing highly extensible API and SDK and linking data among end users and systems. In the future, we aim to develop a global open data platform.

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Article Information Sciences

Development of Laser Scanner Units for UAV

In its i-Construction policy, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has stipulated a manual for public surveying using by UAV photogrammetry with the aim of improving productivity at construction sites. However, UAV photogrammetry requires a huge amount of time to generate point cloud data from photographs, causing a problem that it is difficult to monitor the daily progress of the construction site. There is another problem that it is incapable of taking measurements except daylight hours. Against this backdrop, we have been developing laser scanner units for UAV equipped with LiDAR, IMU and GNSS receiver. Then, we clarified the error factors that are expected to affect the precision prescribed of point cloud data and summarized the requirements for the onboard equipment and the method of generating point cloud data. However, we have not yet proposed nor developed the laser scanner units as well as for generating point cloud data considering these requirements. Thus, in this paper, we developed the laser scanner units and a new method for generating point cloud data within the laser scanner units to optimize the error factors based on these requirements clarified in the existing study.

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Technical Article Education Electrical and Electronic Engineering Information Sciences Interdisciplinary Sciences

Possibility of regional revitalization by students’ IT

Recently, the number of students who can develop applications that can actually be used has increased. We thought that this power could be used for regional revitalization, we tried to connect the students and the region. As a result, we were able to create some interesting applications, some of which have become widely used in practice. For students, before going out to society, they can work on practical application development and know what kind of ingenuity is necessary to get them to actually use it. Although quality is not necessarily guaranteed in rural areas, the possibility of using the latest AI technology at a short development time and at a low cost was shown.

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Technical Article Information Sciences Others

3D Point Studio: Utilization Platform for Point Cloud Data

As Laser measurement technology has made remarkable progress in recent years and the means of measuring the three-dimensional shapes of road spaces as point cloud data have diversified, point cloud data has been measured and accumulated throughout Japan. Point cloud data is useful as a means of accurately grasping the present shape and is expected to be utilized for a wide range of purposes with i-Construction as a turning point. Existing efforts have promoted development of new technologies and open data, steadily increasing opportunities to use point cloud data. However, it is difficult to use point cloud data wisely in accordance with its intended purpose because it is merely a vast set of points that indicate locations in space and does not hold information about the features indicated by the points or about their relationships to other points. Therefore, it is essential to develop an environment for utilizing point cloud data. In this study, we develop 3D Point Studio, a platform for utilizing and sharing 3D data including point cloud data by utilizing area data. The usefulness of this research will be confirmed through examples of applications in the actual sites, and its future development will be discussed.

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