During the 1960s and 1970s, Japan entered rapidly into ocean development in such areas as ocean surveys, ocean civil engineering, and the development of ocean resources. And then equipment developments and technological advances encouraged by the public and private sectors accompanied Japan’s development efforts. Various underwater robots were developed and put to practical use. There are various type underwater robots such as free-swimming type, bottom-reliant type and towed type. Aiming at robotization in seashore, undersea, and seabed construction works, we have developed various underwater robots with focusing on the bottom-reliant type. As a result, (1) an amphibious bulldozers and an underwater bulldozers as 2-crawler robots same as land construction machines, (2) an underwater rubble leveling robot and a “ReCus” (Remote-Controlled Underwater Surveyer) as an 8-legged walking robot, and (3) a 4-crawler underwater trencher has been developed.

This paper introduces high-speed vision the authors developed, together with its applications. Architecture and development examples of high-speed vision are shown first in the sections that follow, then target tracking using active vision is explained. High-speed vision applied to robot control, design guidelines, and the development system for a high-speed robot are then introduced as examples. High-speed robot tasks, including dynamic manipulation and handling of soft objects, are explained and then book flipping scanning – an image analysis application – is explained followed by 1 ms auto pan/tilt and micro visual feedback, which are optical applications.

Many patients who have their movement impaired by paralysis after a cerebral stroke require extensive rehabilitation. Rehabilitation support systems for the upper limbs using force display devices are expected to quantify the effects of rehabilitative training and enhance the motivation of patients. Furusho and Haraguchi have developed force display systems for rehabilitation training that use functional yet highly safe fluid actuators and brakes for the EMUL, Robotherapist and PLEMO Series.

This paper presents a fast motion-compensated structured-light vision system that realizes 3-D shape measurement at 500 fps using a high-frame-rate camera-projector system. Multiple light patterns with an 8-bit gray code, are projected on the measured scene at 1000 fps, and are processed in real time for generating 512×512 depth images at 500 fps by using the parallel processing of a motion-compensated structured-light method on a GPU board. Several experiments were performed on fast-moving 3-D objects using the proposed method.

This research aims to build a system for detecting and avoiding collisions between two industrial robotic arms that are controlled using point-to-point commands in on-line mode. Both robots have no prior knowledge of the commands which will be sent after starting the system. For this purpose, a collision map method has been improved to detect potential collisions between the robots and represent them as a collision area on the map. Commonly, industrial robotic arms have a cylindrical or a near-rectangular shape. The links of the robots have been approximated geometrically by using the swept sphere volume which presents tight modelling. Moreover, it is extremely easy to check for collisions and, therefore, feasible for on-line applications. To produce a collision-free trajectory for the robot, scheduling of the command execution time is necessary to avoid any collision areas on the map. The system has been tested on an OpenGL-based simulator to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system.

This paper proposes a two-dimensional handheld micromanipulator oriented toward bio cell handling. The micromanipulator consists of two flexible links, each of which is constructed with a parallel beam structure. Electric coils and permanent magnets are used to produce an actuator to form double drivers. An explicit model predictive control combined with a PID controller called a robust hybrid control is proposed not only to achieve robust tracking performance, but also to dampen the vibration of the mechanism. The experimental results are compared to results from a standard PID controller to investigate the effectiveness of the micromanipulator.

This paper presents the development of a new step-climbing mechanism for heavy load carriers. According to the method of measurement used, the results of experiments are given as the values of resistance and required driving force against a 10 mm step. The basic design of the proposed mechanism is illustrated, and a prototype is manufactured. Measuring impact acceleration using the prototype, we verify the accuracy of the mechanism CAE analysis. In addition, using the mechanism CAE analysis, we reveal the relationship between the angle, link length, and performance. Several experiments demonstrate that this prototype is able to drive over a 10 mm step, proving the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.

A flexible fish-like biomimetic robot developed for use in narrow passage flows was downsized using shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators. We constructed a fluid-body-coupled model of the robot and considered undulatory swimming and the effect of nonlinear SMA characteristics. An experimental model was also constructed to confirm the analytical model’s feasibility. Shrinkage due to temperature depends on the temperature of the SMA actuator, in which overheating may decrease the fin-vibration amplitude. To avoid this problem, a new driving method was introduced that used a self-excited oscillator with an actuator. Simulation results showed that this method achieves constant thrust in the moving body.

To investigate harm-avoidance actions in human beings in close contact with a robot, we conducted psychological experiments in which one of the sharp end effectors of a robot was made to approach the eyes of a facing participant suddenly. We define three parameters for analyzing harm-avoidance actions: avoidance reaction time, maximum avoidance acceleration, and maximum avoidance speed. Results suggest that avoidance reaction time depends on the initial distance between the human eyes and the approaching object, but not on the type of work being performed. We derive a novel nonparametric multiple comparison for statistically testing multivariate data on human actions. Results show that bivariate data for avoidance reaction time and maximum avoidance speed differ for most participants. These findings are expected to contribute positively to determining human-robot conditions for safe coexistence.

For reasons of production cost and differences in manufacturing dates for mobile robots, individual robots on a robot team have different processing, movement, and detection abilities. To maximize the potential ability of individual robots and minimize overall exploration time in unknown environments, this paper proposes a novel discrete adaptive auction-based algorithm for coordinating multirobot systems (MRSs). A utility calculation scheme that takes into account the dispersion of teammates is presented, followed by an identical performance index formula that converges to a value for measuring differences in exploration efficiency. The performance measure is taken into account in calculating bids for exploration tasks. We compared our results to other exploration strategies by simulation and results show improved exploration time.

The processing of human excretion has become a serious problem in two specialized environments – the nursing care of elderly bed-ridden patients and the microgravity space environments as the International Space Station. To deal with such issues, the authors are developing a new type of toilet system, and they feel that a defecation simulator is needed to investigate and test such systems. This paper discusses development of a robotic defecation simulator (defecation robot) that mimics defecation involving the rectum, anal sphincter, puborectalis muscle, abdominal pressure, etc.

As Japan has become an increasingly aging society, various power-assist equipment have been developed, for instance, a robot suit called HAL used to assist the elderly in walking when their muscles have become weakened and a power assisting suit for farmers to reduce their burdens in agricultural work. The main problem in developing such power-assist equipment is light weight and low price. We have developed the power-assist machine that uses only one actuator for assisting the movement of multiple joints.

Based on our robotic fish studies since 2003, this paper introduces a FPGA offline control underwater searcher (FOCUS) and a bream robot equipped with advanced mechanism (BREAM). The performance of the first FOCUS prototype, built in 2011, is now being improved. FOCUS has 2 cameras and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with high arithmetic processing capabilities. The appearance of the FOCUS is so cute. The two FOCUS types now available are an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). BREAM, in contrast, is an entertainment robot prototype designed for Asutamuland Tokushima exhibition. BREAM has four joints based on analytical computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results showing that robotic fish with multiple joints achieve better propulsion performance than that with single joint. Two of the four joints are used for propulsion and two are used for turning the prototype. RC-FOCUS is also exhibited at Asutamuland Tokushima, together with BREAM.

Safety is the most important factor in the civil use of aerial robots. Research on aerial cargo robots, also known as cargo unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) started in 2004. The first ACR prototype flight was made on November 22, 2005. The ACR prototype consists of a flexible airfoil, twin microturbojet engines and a gravity center (GC) controller. The ACR meets the following four safety requirements: (i) touchability, i.e., without propellers or rotors, (ii) the low sink rate of a parachute, i.e., below 1.0 m/s, (iii) low stall speed, i.e., <30 km/h, (iv) a redundancy arrangement control. The most important safety specification of all is infallibility in ACR service applications.

Ultrasound diagnosis is generally employed for its high level of safety and ease of use. The remote medical system for ultrasound medical diagnostics (RUDS) we developed enables medical doctors to send and receive information such as diagnostic images, providing essentially the same level of medical diagnostic services as conventional diagnostic systems at remote locations.