Elevator is important for robots to move between floors in buildings such as office and shops. Current methods to enable robots to use elevators require significant preparation on either the robot or the elevator side. In this study, we propose an elevator system that uses multi-sensor based elevator status recognition and IoT switches to operate the elevator, which enables robots to move between floors by using the elevator only by installing additional modules. The effectiveness of the proposed system is demonstrated through actual use of the system with multiple robots to realize floor-to-floor movement by robots using the elevator.

This paper addresses a path planning method aimed at shortening calculation time. The proposed method takes advantage of the absence of obstacles in the space occupied by the robot when the robot and obstacles do not collide. In order to shortening the calculation time, the proposed method repeatedly searches in a straight line toward the target position and escapes in the direction of the mentioned space. Therefore, when there are no obstacles, a straight path from the start position to the target position is generated in the task space. We demonstrate examples of path planning tasks and verify the validity of the proposed method by comparing the calculation time with conventional path planning methods.

Considering teleoperation of manipulators, we examined the effects of latency that may occur during teleoperation on the sense of agency. The study assumed pick-and-place operations with the manipulator, and initially evaluated the impact of steady latency on the task. Next, in order to further investigate the effect of latency in which area in the operation, we divided the pick-and-place operation into a rough operation, which is a part of large movement, and a precision operation, which is a fine positioning operation necessary when grasping an object, and evaluated the difference in the effect of latency in each operation. In addition to the steady-state latency, the evaluation also took into account the latency fluctuations that may occur in actual communication. In addition, we analyzed the changes in subjective evaluation due to delay and the operation logs, clarified the factor structure of the sense of subjectivity, and also showed the relationship with the logs.

To support laparoscopic surgery which requires a high level of skill from the surgeon, we have developed a system that superimposes endoscopic images and kidney models by using augmented reality (AR) technology and considers intraoperative organ deformation. In this paper, we propose a real-time automatic alignment method for the superimposed display of endoscopic images and kidney models. This method uses feature points (markers) around the organ as reference points to align the endoscopic image in real space and the CG model in virtual space. To verify the accuracy of the proposed method, we evaluate the error between the real space and the virtual space on the superimposed display screen.

This letter proposes a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) based distributed control scheme for navigation of multiple UAVs with limited Field-of-View (FoV). Each UAV distributedly maintains connectivity with its target UAV. We consider a GPS-denied environment, with UAVs relying on information from onboard sensors which have limited FoV. Generally, due to the dynamics of the UAV, the sensing task can often collide with the motion task. Also, UAVs have physical constraints which make those tasks more difficult. In our method, NMPC is used to handle these tasks under constraints. The performance of our method is verified by a simulation.

Hummingbird-inspired flexible wings were fabricated and tested with an electric flapping mechanism to explore the optimal design of the flexibility. The wing consisted of 3D-printed flexible radial shafts realizing spanwise torsion of the wing, an elastomeric membrane allowing the spanwise torsion by stretching, and a torsion-bar spring at the leading-edge base directly promoting the spanwise torsion. Measurement of lift and input power of the tethered flapping mechanism with different wing designs revealed that a favorable equilibrium between high lift and low power consumption can be achieved by the less-stiff torsion bar spring, stiff and tapered shafts, and the elastic membrane.

A robot lower limb mechanism that replicates human mass distribution, link dimension, joint power, and joint elasticity was developed. The authors intended to apply human locomotion dynamics to humanoid robot aiming to enhance its locomotion abilities. This mechanism incorporates a non-interfering parallel mechanism which drives the ankle joint from the thigh without interfering with the motion of the knee joint. Through experiments, it was confirmed that the knee joint motion and ankle joint motion do not in-terfere each other, and that it is possible to obtain arbitrary ankle joint angles.