The air-conditioning systems of the buildings have been diversified in recent years, and the complexity of the system has been increased. At the same time, safety and stability of the system and the low-running cost are demanded. To respond these demands, various researches have been done. The developments of the fault detection and diagnosis systems have received greater attention to make the air-conditioning system more efficient. Most of those systems require the faults pattern to detect the faults. However, the dynamical systems are not easy to analyze and nor to collect the fault patterns in advance. We propose a model simulation of the air-conditioning system to collect the fault patterns and a real time faults diagnosis system using a recurrent type neural network (RNN).

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In this paper we state a human tracking system in dynamic environment based on cooperation between fixed cameras and moving cameras for creating safe and secure spaces. It is difficult for only the fixed cameras to monitor the whole of the clouded dynamic environment because of the occlusion by the large objects such as the partitions, shelves and foliage plants in the environment. We introduce the moving cameras such as the mobile robots for monitoring the unobservable areas of the fixed cameras. The moving cameras monitor the unobservable spaces of the fixed cameras that are caused by occlusion by the objects. The system monitors the target position in cooperation between the fixed cameras and moving ones. Experimental results illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of our proposed cooperative system.

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Recently, it has been widely recognized that control and mechanical systems cannot be designed separately due to their tight interdependency. However, there still leaves much to be understood about how the relationship between control and mechanical systems should be. Therefore, as an initial step toward understanding "well-balanced coupling" between control and mechanical systems, this study describes a technique able to analyze the spatiotemporal structure of the dynamics stemming from the interplay among control/mechanical systems and the environment by taking a modular robot as a practical example. Owing to the fact that our modular robot "Slimebot" intrinsically has large degrees of freedom, we have successfully observed an interesting spatiotemporal structure in the interaction dynamics by employing the Navier-Stokes equation.

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Degrees of freedom in the motion must be reduced to some extent in order to sufficiently construct the humanoid robot hand in small and light-weight. There is due to a large constraint at the number and total power in the robot hand, since an adequate actuator which can be used at present is only a motor, and which may especially spoil the motion of pinching papers and needles in the fingertip which is one of the important function in the robotic hand. In this study, therefore, the authors developed the robotic hand that can generate the pinching motion by appropriately adding necessity minimum degrees of freedom without destroying the general harmony as a humanoid robotic hand.

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This paper discusses experimental verifications of a two-dimensional modular robot called "Slimebot", consisting of many identical modules. The Slimebot exhibits adaptive reconfiguration by exploiting a fully decentralized algorithm able to control its morphology according to the environment encountered. One of the significant features of our approach is that we explicitly exploit "emergent phenomena" stemming from the interplay between control and mechanical systems in order to control the morphology in real time. To this end, we particularly focus on a "functional material" and a "mutual entrainment" between nonlinear oscillators, the former of which is used as a spontaneous connectivity control mechanism between the modules, and the latter of which acts as the core of the control mechanism for the generation of locomotion. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm can induce locomotion, which allows us to successfully control the morphology of the modular robot in real time according to the situation without losing the coherence of the entire system.

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In this paper, we investigated the morphology and controller of biped robots. We viewed them as design components that together can induce dynamically stable bipedal locomotion. We conducted coupled evolution of the morphology and controller of a biped robot, which consists of nine links and eight joints, and is actuated by oscillators without sensor feedback in three-dimensional simulation. As results, both pseudo-passive dynamic walkers and active-control walkers emerged, but the pseudo-passive dynamic walkers showed more dynamic stability than active-control walkers. This is because compliant components in morphology function as noise filters and passive oscillators. Finally, we have concluded that appropriate compliance is a key to achieving dynamical stability during locomotion.

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The structural features of a system deeply affect on the attribute of the system and the function. The effect of the phenomenon can be found in wide area, such as animal brain and WWW. In this paper, we deal with a method for changing a behavior of a system by structural modification by using coupled van der Pol(VDP) oscillators. At first, we analyze mathematically a simple oscillator network composed of 4 oscillators. Secondly, according to the analysis result, we describe some characteristic between the structural features of the network and the convergent states. Finally, we propose a method for changing behavior, and apply the method to a hexapod robot.

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Recently, it has been widely recognized that control and mechanical systems cannot be designed separately due to their tight interdependency. However, there still leaves much to be understood about how well-balanced coupling between control and mechanical systems can be achieved. Therefore, as an initial step toward this goal, this study intensively discusses the effect of the intrinsic dynamics of a robot's body on the resulting behavior, in the hope that mechanical systems appropriately designed will allow us to significantly reduce the complexity of control algorithm required as well as to increase the robustness against the environmental perturbation. More precisely, we focus on the property of leg elasticity of a passive dynamic running biped, and investigate how this influences the stability of running. As a result, we have found that a certain type of nonlinearity in the leg elasticity plays a crucial role to enhance the robustness against the environmental perturbation. To the best of our knowledge, this has never been explicitly considered so far.

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The goal of this study is to realize environmental adaptability of a snake-like robot that can cope with changing ground friction. To achieve this, a decentralized controller based on CPG is utilized and sensory input from force sensors attached on the bottom of the robot is used as feedback information. In this paper, the method to obtain adaptive CPG parameters using genetic algorithm is presented and preliminary results are shown.

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The hand posture estimation system by searching a similar image from a vast database, such as our previous research, may cause the increase of processing time, and prevent realtime controlling of a robot. In this study, the authors proposed a new estimation method of human hand posture by rearranging a large-scale database with the Self-Organizing Map including self-reproduction and self-annihilation, which enables two-step searches of similar image with short period of processing time, within small errors, and without deviation of search time. The experimental results showed that our the system exhibited good performance with high accuracy within processing time above 150 fps for each image input with a 2.8GHz CPU PC.

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The aim of this study is to develop a snake-like robot controlled by CPG which can adapt to dynamically changing environments. This paper focuses on friction force that the robot receives from ground as feed back information in order that CPG can generate adaptive meandering movement. And the sensor which measure this friction force are developed and the validity of the sensors has been experimentally verified. Furthermore, from the result of snake-meandering experiments, it becomes clear that Coulomb friction model is not realistic to model real friction force characteristics.

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We report on the design and stability analysis of a simple quadruped running controller that can autonomously generate steady running of a quadruped with good energy efficiency and suppress such disturbances as irregularities of terrain. In this paper, we first consider the fixed point of quasipassive running based on a sagittal plane model of a quadruped robot. Next, we regard friction and collision as disturbances around the fixed point of quasi-passive running, and propose an original control method to suppress these disturbances. Since it is difficult to accurately measure the total energy of the system in a practical application, we use a Delayed Feedback Control(DFC) method based on the stance phase period measured by contact sensors on the robot's feet with practical accuracy. The DFC method not only stabilizes the running around a fixed point, but also results in the transition from standing to steady running and stabilization in running up a small step. The effectiveness of the proposed control method is validated by simulations and experiments using a quadruped named "Rush".

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Recent physiological research has revealed the importance of neuromodulator(e.g. NO) in the pheromone behavior such as fighting behavior in insects. This research aims to model the function of neuromodulator in fighting behavior of crickets, and to emerge adaptive action selection by constructive approach. In this report, we assume a model for adaptive behavior selection according to the physiological knowledge, and run some computer simulations.

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This study deals with visual-tracking control for a quadrupedal robot. The control system is composed of two blocks: First one is visual-guidance commander and the other is motion controller with non-linear oscillator network. Realtime visual-tracking control is implemented with proposed control system and verified the effeciency through numerical simulations and hardware experiments.

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An autonomous mobile robot needs to always obtain a self-position while it moves towards a target position. Conventional methods based upon recognition of landmarks by using image processing have risk of misrecognition by disturbance. It is difficult that the robot obtain the self-position precisely by using external area sensors such as GPS (Global Positioning System), ultrasonic range sensor, and so on. In this paper, we propose an estimation algorithm which obtains the self-position by using a ground image. We developed an application program based on the proposed algorithm, and verified a feasibility of the proposed method.

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In this paper, White-line Sensing Algorithm for mobile monitoring robot with safety aisle in factory is described. We suggested the method decision camera-setting-parameter for reducing quantization error by camera. We achieved the experiments in actual environment, we confirmed this Algorithm is effective and flexibility on actual.

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For efficiency of the wide area exploration by a planetary rover, the composition of a global environment map is very important technic. Global map is composed by matching and overlapping terrain features of each Digital Elevation Map, measured by a rover during its traverse. However, each data contains information of different area, therefore those can be overlapped on small part which also has different missing part because of the occlusion problem and, as a result, it makes deterioration of the quality of global map. In this paper, global map generation method by iterating overlap-part estimation is discussed and evaluated by some experimental results, and finally improvement of matching accuracy is indicated.

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This paper deals with generation of 3D environment models. The model is expected to be used for location recognition by robots and users. For such a use, very precise models are not necessary. We thus develop a method of generating 3D environment models relatively simply and fast. We use an omnidirectional stereo as a primary sensor and additionally use a laser range finder. The model is composed of layered contours of free spaces, with textures extracted from images. Results of modeling and application of the model to robot localization are presented.

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In this paper, a real-time path planning algorithm for a single mobile robot which has omni-directional vision sensors is proposed. The robot implements RTA^* - real-time heuristic search algorithm, by which the robot can reach its goal position by alternating searching and moving. For this implementation, the robot needs to transform its sensory information to a graph searching space, and to solve this problem, a method of the transformation for an omni-directional distance sensor is proposed. A multi-resolution searching architecture is also proposed which changes the sensor resolution according to the robot's facing situations. Finally simulations and experimental results show the validities of the proposed method.

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This paper presents a person following mobile robot which follows a target subject while tracking one's back. The developed robot carries out autonomous movement in a real environment based on the information obtained from a carried stereo camera, a laser ranger sensor, ultrasonic sensors and touch sensors. An image processing method which detects the subject in a complicated background using information on distance and color is proposed. For image processing, a specific person is discovered by the disparity image and color distribution matching by stereo camera. The robot's movement is controlled by the results of the image processing and the information obtained from the various sensors. The proposed image processor is applying to a robot, and the results showed the robot to follow the target subject in a real environment.

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The humanoid robot is expected to work in human environment, and is required to excute localization and navigation autonomously. In this paper, indoor navigation is realized based on view-based approach using a camera mounted on the head. In case of humanoid robot, image vibration and blur due to walking is a crucial issue for image matching in localization. Thus a method to select appropriate images for matching is proposed. The navigation function with proposed method was implemented on a humanoid robot HRP-2, and the effectiveness was confirmed by indoor walking experiments.

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This paper deals with a target that a humanoid with a small range image sensor recognizes obstacles and avoid them autonomously while walking. Planar regions, on which the humanoid can walk, and obstacles are distinguished by using a relative disparity image obtained by a small range image sensor. In addition, an integrated system that can feed back obtained obstacle information to the humanoid is constructed. Experiments show that the humanoid can recognize obstacles and stop walking autonomously by the proposed system.

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This paper described the autonomous motion control of the sphere drive type robot. The robot is equipped with various circuits, sensor and driver system inside sphere. Therefore appearances of the robot is perfect sphere. This robot runs autonomously by driving the plastic hull of sphere by friction from tire inside. We call this kind of driver system, "Sphere Drive". We proposed the sensory system and control method, and achieved the straight wall following.

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In this paper, we propose new mobile mechanism which can control the position by slanting the posture instead of using tires or legs. Many mobile mechanisms which control the position of a center of gravity had been already suggested. Most of them have sphere-shaped body or column-shaped body, and its whole body rotates continuously when it moves the position on the surface of ground. The mobile mechanism we proposed in this paper has a hemisphere-shaped body, and we name it Giga-Bowl.

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This research is developing the robot of a ball type which has a jump performance. In this paper, describes the mechanism of the actuator to make work in the jump and turn. In addition, we show the result of movement inspection and a jump experiment equipped with two actuators. This robot is developed so that movement of irregular ground is enabled, and expectation will be possible as a rescue robot in the future.

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In this paper we explain the design of leg-wheeled hybrid jumping robot. First, we developed a light-weight and compact actuator, piston-wire mechanism. Using this mechanism, we achieved the high-speed movement of the leg. Then, the relationship between the jumping height and the motor position is considerd, and the effective design of leg-wheeled mechanism for jumping emerged. In addition, we developed a transmission mechanism inside of the leg frame. Finally, using the light-weight leg-wheeled mechanism, we experiment in wheel drive jumping.

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This paper discusses jumping pattern generation for a multi-linked robot so that it can jump as high as possible under torque limitation. By applying GA for determining torque assignment, we obtain jumping patterns with respect to the torque limitation under the mass of robot. We show the obtained jumping pattern where two and the other two limbs behave as the role of arms and legs, respectively.

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This paper proposes a simple hoping mechanism using vibration of two DOF system for stair-climbing. A robot with the proposed mechanism is composed of two bodies connected by springs. Here, to realize soft landing on stairs, we analyzed characteristics of hopping in terms of spring contraction and mass ratio of two bodies by both numerical simulations and hardware experiments. The results showed that the robot with this mechanism could land on stair without any impact and control the height.

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This paper describes acrobatic behavior simulation and actual experiment of J^2 the artistic robot. J^2 has 4 kinds of actuators for acrobatic motions that are Inertia Actuator, Cam Charger, Hip Joint and Knee Joint. A main objective is to realize somersault motion. The motion is simulated and a result is shown possibility. It is reflected experiment for actual robot. We obtain a possibility of somersault motion and properness of simulation model by comparing simulation and actual experiment.

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We study of the biped skating robot "BSR-1"(Biped Skating Robot - 1) which performs skating action using the passive rollers which attached the sole of its each foot. In this paper, we consider the movement of the center of gravity of BSR-1 by moving the upper half of the body, moment compensation, and in curving and stopping action. And some experiments and those results are reported to development of the biped skating robot with wireless radio control.

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A water surface running machine is a machine that runs along the water surface like a basilisk lizard. The machine supports its body weight by slapping its feet on the water surface and stroking them into the water. This report presents the design of its leg mechanism driven by pneumatic actuators. To realize the water surface running machine, it is required to generate large upward force when the machine slaps and strokes its foot into the water and minimize downward force when the machine pulls its foot out of the water by using actuators with large power/weight ratio. As such an actuator, pneumatic actuator with flexible cylinder and flexible rod was adopted. We proposed the foot motion to generate large upward force and minimize downward force. In this foot motion, to generate large upward force, the foot impacts on the water surface in the vertical direction with high speed, and to minimize downward force, the foot is pulled out of the water through the air cavity. And we propose leg mechanism generating this foot motion with flexible air cylinders and developed a 3 D.O.F leg mechanism. We designed and built a prototype water surface running machine. We experimentally investigated the motion of the body and foot, and the force acting on the foot. The prototype generated upward force, but didn't generate large impulse force when foot impacts on the water surface and minimize downward force acting on the foot by pulling the foot out of the water through the air cavity. Based on these experimental results, we proposed modified leg motion and mechanism to generate larger upward force and minimize downward force.

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We have many small diameter pipes that are cooling pipes for atomic power stations, boiler pipes, and gas or water pipe lines. They must be periodically inspected in order to protect the accident previously. Diameters of these pipes are different at the place where pipes change from the main to the branch. The inspection robot for these pipes must move different diameter. We propose a mobile robot that can surely move in a pipe whose diameter changes. The robot is constructed by the five rubber bellows as pneumatic actuator, six electromagnetic valves and six air feeding tubes. The bellows composes three somites by being arranged in two rows and three columns. The somite can make the arc like the bimetal by giving different pressure to each bellows. The arc somite can hold the pipe. The movement of the microrobot with three somites is imitating as for the accordion movement that is the movement of the snake operation. The fabricated mobile robot was confirmed to move in different diameter pipes whose diameters are between 46 mm and 60 mm. Its speed was 8.2 mm/s.

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The purpose of this research is to realize a pipe inspection robot which can adapt to pipe diameter of 1 to 3 inch. The robot is composed of 13 links and driven by progressing motion of sine wave. It obtains driving force by holding wall of the pipes. To decrease the number of cables, the small servo controller is installed in the robot in each link. The controller is composed of PIC and a small motor driver circuit, and these are connected by the I2C communication. In addition, to strengthen the grip power, the cover made of the silicone was produced. As a result, it came to be able to negotiate T-pipes and elbow pipes smoothly, and to travel in a vertical pipe.

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In this paper, we propose a transportation and emplacement method to dispose the high level radioactive waste. An advantage of the proposed method is that the system can transport and deposit the heavy waste in a narrow disposal tunnel. The transpotation system uses an air bearing to carry the waste in a narrow space, and the emplacement system has an air jack for lifting the waste to get it down safely. In this paper, we first explain elements of the proposed method, then we implement the method in the experimental robot system. Finally, experimental results illustrate the validity of the proposed method with the developed robot.

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We have many small diameter pipes that are cooling pipes for atomic power stations, boiler pipes, and gas or water pipe lines. They must be periodically inspected in order to protect the accident previously. Diameters of these pipes are different at the place where pipes change from the main to the branch. The inspection robot for these pipes must move different diameter. We propose a mobile robot that can surely move in a pipe whose diameter changes. The robot is constructed by the three rubber bellows as pneumatic actuator, seven electromagnetic valves and four suctional brakes. The fabricated mobile robot was confirmed to move in different diameter pipes whose diameters are between 90 mm and 150 mm. Its speed was 21 mm/s.

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This paper shows that the progress of the new mechanism robot of cleaning while both sides of the window at same time has been advances by using the strong magnetic adhering power and torque of the multi magnetic poles type permanent magnets, to achieve to attempt further of the window cleaning robot with the rise to demand working efficiency, recently.

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We suggested parent-and-child type wall-climbing robot system "Anchor Climber", which has high movability and high payload, and possibility of working on wall surface such as large-construction's wall. This "Child Unit" can shift two adhering states named "Stick State" and "Movable State". As steels have being generally used large-construction, we focus on adhering method of using permanent-magnet. In this paper, we explain about a new "Child Unit" which adopted a new type of IB magnet unit and improved than former of then.

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A combustion engine driven vehicle with wide range transmission has been made and tested. This wide range transmission consists of a half toroidal type continuously variable transmission (CVT) and a differential gear, which transmit the engine torque to wheels by various reduction ratio expanded from forward to reverse. The toroidal CVT consists of 2 disks and a power roller supported by a parallel link mechanism. The inclination angle of the power roller decides the reduction ratio. The incremental or decremental speed of the inclination angle is controlled by the joint angle of the parallel link mechanism. The vehicle speed is controlled by a servo mechanism, which consists of a rotation sensor of the output shaft and a link driver.

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In EXPO 2005 AICHI JAPAN, we performed an experiment using intelligent wheelchair robots that were developed in the NEDO Project for the Practical Application of Next-Generation Robots. These robots can travel to destinations autonomously in the demonstration course. In order to travel autonomously, robots need to know their own position and direction accurately. We developed an integrated positioning unit which enables accurate position and direction determination using GPS, RFID and directional compass. This report introduces an outline of the integrated positioning unit and presents the results of the demonstration experiment which was performed at the EXPO site.

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This paper describes the technologies employed in the of receptionist robot "wakamaru" and the demonstration result in the world exposition 2005 in Aichi.

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SuiPPi is one of the practical robots that underwent long-term experimental evaluation at Expo 2005. SuiPPi's mission was to clean the Expo site, for example, the Global Loop main pedestrian loop. The Global Loop is about 2.6km long, 21 m wide, and has many curves and slopes as well as many obstacles like benches and vending machines. To execute its mission, SuiPPi had to solve two problems, moving autonomously over long distances around the loop to the directed cleaning area, and to clean areas that were not simply rectangular in shape. The navigation implemented in SuiPPi has solved these problems by recognizing the environment and adapting to it. And the effectiveness of SuiPPi was confirmed.

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This paper shows the current status and future prospects of the research on musculoskeletal humanoids. We have been continuously progressing the project of the musculoskeletal flexible-spine humanoid "Kotaro", which was developed for the Prototype Robot Exhibition at the EXPO'05. The improvements include the structures of the muscle unit, the spine and the head, the geometric model in the computer, electric circuits, tension sensors, spherical joint angle sensors, and so on.

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We have developed the humanoid robot with human supervision and tested the validity in the prototype robot exhibition at the World EXPO 2005. In this paper, we described how to operate the HRP-2 No.10 with human supervision in each phase of the autonomous mode and the tele-operation mode using two joysticks.

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In this paper we focus on a development of master-slave arm to support "mutual telexistence," which realizes remote dexterous manipulation tasks in hazardous place and close physical communication with other people using gestures. After the exhibition in World Exposition 2005 Aichi, Japan, we improved the control algorithm for bilateral impedance control of master-slave system and developed a new master hand system for precise force feedback. New slave arm with the optical torque sensor to measure the external torque in each joint of the arm is also being developed.

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We have been developing a leg-wheeled type mobile robot IMR-Type 1 (prototype) to be able to move around indoors efficiently. This robot has 3 legs, and has wheels at the tip of each leg. It can move by wheels when it stands with own legs apart in order to keep balance and go up and down the stairs by its legs like human. This paper describes the configuration and improvement of the ankle joint and wheels drive mechanism for speeding-up and results of experiments.

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We are developing a tree climbing robot named WOODY in order to support the forestry works. In this paper, we show the control system of the robot which makes it easy and safe to operate the robot. First, to automate the maneuvering motion, we installed the leaf spring on each arm to measure the grasping power. Next, to operate the robot under the tree, we equipped a CCD camera and micro-controller into the robot. We carried out some experiments and confirmed the advantage of the system.

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This paper describes development of window cleaning robot and perspective for commercial viability. The developed robot is designed based on survey for the unborn users. This robot climbs on vertical glass by using vacuumed suction disk and two wheels. This robot has the system to control the attitude of the robot body using acceleration sensor when the robot moves on vertical surface. As the result of the experiments, its is confirmed that developed robot can move on the all over the framed square window automatically. This paper gives motivation of this development, the mechanical system and control system, the experimental result and conclusions.

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A method for limb mechanism robot "ASTERISK" of climbing up onto steps which are higher than its body is proposed. Basically the robot climbs by wave gait. It inclines its body so that its legs can reach the step. When the robot lifts up the legs, it calculates the stability margin by measuring the body orientation with its acceleration sensor. The robot also detects the contact between the feet and step using joint compliance. As the result of experiment, the robot could climb up onto a 230[mm] high step.

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In this paper, high-speed batting robot system using high-speed mega-pixel vision is introduced. The high-speed mega-pixel vision can track the flying ball at 1000fps, and the manipulator enables high-speed swing by elastic energy accumulation. The result of the batting experiment of hitting ball at 160 km/hr Speed is shown.

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This paper describes the development of Kitasap2, a self cure robot which was developed to support people with mobility problems. It can be manually operated using a joystick and autonomously move as well. Kitasap2's system consists of the host computer and the physical body of the robot equipped with a robotic ann. Both are connected through a wireless LAN. A test was successfully conducted to autonomously move from the user's site to a goal and manually pick up an object, and autonomously carry it back to the user. Moreover, this paper describes the research of automatic holding of the object that using a robotic ann. As a result, it came to be able to hold the object automatically by instructing and recognizing the object using the image from two kinds of cameras.

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