The utilization of small unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs), commonly known as drones, has increased drastically in various industries in the past decade. Commercial drones face challenges in terms of safety, durability, flight performance, and environmental effects such as the risk of collision and damage. Biomimetics, which is inspired by the sophisticated flying mechanisms in aerial animals, characterized by robustness and intelligence in aerodynamic performance, flight stability, and low environmental impact, may provide feasible solutions and innovativeness to drone design. In this paper, we review the recent advances in biomimetic approaches for drone development. The studies were extracted from several databases and we categorized the challenges by their purposes—namely, flight stability, flight efficiency, collision avoidance, damage mitigation, and grasping during flight. Furthermore, for each category, we summarized the achievements of current biomimetic systems and then identified their limitations. We also discuss future tasks on the research and development associated with biomimetic drones in terms of innovative design, flight control technologies, and biodiversity conservation. This paper can be used to explore new possibilities for developing biomimetic drones in industry and as a reference for necessary policy making.

Studies on techniques for multimedia works production and imagination expression have been insufficient. Developments in computer graphics and synthesis technologies, however, have resulted in new types of methods and systems for creating video scenes, that is, virtual reality and virtual systems such as virtual studio. We are engaged in research on tools and an environment using technologies for virtual systems that can help non-specialists effectively create and present the images they wish to convey. In this paper, we propose a new image expression environment called IER (the Image Expression Room) which consists of two parts: a virtual studio with a large display and a new and integrated media handling system called COMI&CS (Computer Organized Media Integration & Communication System). IER allows people that do not have expert knowledge on the manipulation of media or techniques to express their images, to do so with a high degree of freedom. Moreover, we introduce a new type of media handling technique that uses impressions. It is called KANSEI processing in Japan.

In the historical discussions left by philosophers, we can find not a few descriptions about sign language and deaf people. However, it is hard to say that the accurate translations on each description has been done and philosophical debate has been continuing to this day. The description about sign language and deaf people often includes the author’s own opinion associated with the belief how human’s intelligence should be cultivated and the reader also tends to interpret the description with his/her normative consciousness of scandalized body model. For this reason, the erroneous translations and the non-essential discussions were created and each discussion has been consumed as mere a thought, not as a philosophical problem. In this background, this paper focuses on the modern but the controversial interpretations of Aristotle’s literatures and Wundt’s discussions on sign language. In each discussion, the author shows the possible way how we can argue the original philosophical problem from the contemporary point of view.

This paper discusses the design of configurations of videophone equipment aimed at online sign interpretation. We classified interpretation services into three types of situations: on-site interpretation, partial online interpretation, and full online interpretation. For each situation, the spatial configurations of the equipment are considered keeping the issue of nonverbal signals in mind. Simulation experiments of sign interpretation were performed using these spatial configurations and the qualities of the configurations were assessed. The preferred configurations had the common characteristics that the hearing subject could see the face of his/her principal conversation partner, that is, the deaf subject. The results imply that hearing people who do not understand sign language utilize nonverbal signals for facilitating interpreter-mediated conversation.