Recently many researchers have investigated biped robots. Biped robots have friendly atmosphere for human beings and will become to do role of helping many people at variety places. Biped robots have the demerit to consume more energy than robots that moved by wheels. In this report, we investigated the energy consumption of biped robot to find the optimal walking sequence for biped robot. The energy consumption is varied by many parameters. In this paper, we discussed the fluctuation of the energy consumption against the change of the trajectory of idle foot. The minimum energy consumption is smaller than the cycloid trajectory.

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In this paper, a new method for the continuous travel on the rough terrain by a leg-wheeled robot is proposed. The proposed leg-wheel hybrid locomotion is realized by the continuous transition movement between the wheeled locomotion and legged locomotion. The effectiveness is confirmed by a developed leg-wheel hybrid type robot ASTERISK.

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A ladder climbing motion for limb mechanism robot "ASTERISK" is proposed. This robot has six legs. The upper three legs hook on the upper stave from its both sides alternately, just like pinching it. The lower three legs hook on the lower stave in the same way. Hence the robot can climb the ladder stably. When the robot lifts up its body, the robot controls its support legs so as to distribute its weight equally to them.

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In this paper, we have aimed to enable a steady fast by change the program and the hardware of an autonomous quadruped robot walking and turn and to do the navigation. At that time, the one that the addition and the deletion of the program can be easily done without using a complex control method. This time, we consider the change in the action of Subsumption Architecture and Potential Function. And, whether the module that we changed operates well is considered. It is thought that the navigation whose PF newly introduced this time is superior to SA can be done from the experiment result.

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In this paper, we study an inverse kinematics problem in which optimum trajectories of walking robot toes are generated under the condition of minimum walking energy and the capability to avoid arbitrary shape obstacle. It is important for the walking robot that the motions of legs is determined to achieve the desired body operation. The trajectory of the toe is expressed by the multiple curves and the connection condition is used for reducing parameters. Neural networks are applied to generate the optimum trajectory parameters for an obstacle shape and a set of toe positions. Furthermore fuzzy clustering technique is introduced to reduce the duplication of data for learning of the neural network.

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Biped walking is easily adaptable to rough terrain such as stairs and stony paths, but the walk speed and energy efficiency on the flat ground is not so effective compared with wheeled locomotion. So, we propose a new control method for a swizzle motion of biped walking robots mounted on inline skates. The swizzle motion uses the friction force generated by periodical movement of passive wheels. The proposed method is based on the reaction force which acts on the foot, and a new reference position is changed according to the reaction force not to be large internal force. Through hardware experiments, the effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed.

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Biped walking is easily adaptable to rough terrain such as stairs and stony paths, but the walk speed and energy efficiency on the flat ground is not so effective compared with wheeled locomotion. This paper describes a motion pattern generation for roller skating of biped walking robots. If the robot's weight is on the standing foot during kicking motion, there will be no sufficient friction for the kicking foot. So, we propose a kicking pattern generation based on ZMP from a kicking phase to a standing phase. Through hardware experiments, a skating motion was realized, and the effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed.

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We report the two legs walker applying more powerful air cylinder. The 1^<st> walker with air cylinder controlled by On-Off valves is manufactured, and fundamental actions have been done, however hinges drifts as much as 20% occurred by a small amount of left air in the cylinders. We applied new valves which are possible to control proportional displacement corresponding to added voltage, then hinges motions are now correct and controllable.

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This paper proposes a method to generate running motions for bipedal robots using analytic solutions. There are two phases in running gaits, the aerial phase and the supporting phase. The COG motion is constrained by the ZMP equation in the supporting phase. By adding a weak constraint to the vertical COG motion, the ZMP equation with vertical COG oscillation can be solved analytically. In the aerial phase the COG motion is constrained to a parabolic orbit. This method can generate COG motions simultaneously for both the supporting phase and the aerial phase. The validity of this method is demonstrated with computer simulations.

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To understand dexterity in motion performed by animals, we developed a bipedal dynamic robot with a pneumatic artificial musculoskeletal system. The musculoskeletal system gives animals the ability to move in a huge variety of environments. The artificial musculoskeletal system proposed here is based on the engineering concept of using biological structures as guidelines for robot architecture. In our work, pneumatic artificial muscles are used for the muscular system. In the experiment, the robot achieved the high jumping, softlanding and kicking football. Our results demonstrate the contribution of the artificial musculoskeletal system as a physical feedback loop in explosive movements.

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This paper describes design of leg driving mechanism for a track-changeable quadruped walking robot, TITAN X. TITAN X is proposed to realize leg-track hybrid locomotion without restricted walking mobility. TITAN X has a special belt-driving system that changes between timing belt for walking and track belt for track propulsion. TITAN X can utilize the installed actuators for walking at track locomotion, so additional mechanism for locomotion changing is very light weight. Leg driving mechanism is composed of driving system by track-belt for light weight foot, and locomotion changing mechanism that consists of clutch mechanism and latch mechanism. We constructed prototype model of leg mechanism and tested some basic performance.

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In recent years, leg-wheel robots that included wheels in the end of foot are studied to improve locomotiveness of walk type robots. These robots have the high-speed mobility that is energy saving of wheels and irregular ground run performance of legs. This method has a weak point to have to perform a change of a movement method depending on a road surface state. Now, we propose a four-leg robot equipped with crawlers depending on no road surface state.

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This paper proposes an adaptive locomotion switching with a multi-locomotion robot based on environment recognition. The multi-locomotion robot has been developed for an experimental testbed to achieve multiple locomotions such as biped walk, quadruped walk, and brachiation. According to the terrain appreciation with a lazer range finder and encoders, the robot switches its walking patterns and goes through several types of roads.

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This paper describes the new method for controlling biped locomotion with a controller based on sinusoidal wave functions. Three modes of biped locomotion which are walking steadily, changing speed of walking, and changing operation from walking to stopping are demonstrated. Biped robot walking is simulated by using calculation method of multibody dynamics. The locomotion is achieved by joint trajectories tracking control for the leg of biped robot. The joints' desired trajectories are created from a sinusoidal wave by modulating it with four parameters that are amplitude, threshold, phase, and offset. It is proven that various modes of walking are achieved by controlling the four parameters.

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The goal of this paper is to improve 4-legged robot "Ryuma", and to investigate the influence of shaking the head in walk gait. We moved the position of DC motor of knee joint from the fore leg to its body to reduce fore leg's weight and its moment of inertia around the shoulder joint. In addition, we added a passive joint in the neck. By the new neck joint mechanism, the head can keep the same posture to the body all the time. We measured inclinations of the body and knee joint angle in walk gait with and without shaking the head. As the result, we found that the body posture and knee joint angle are more stable with shaking the neck than without shaking.

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In order for a legged locomotive robot to enable rough terrain roving, it is important not only to improve the performance of the robot itself but also to grasp characteristics of the rough terrain. This study aims at clarifying characteristics of a marshy terrain in connection with realization of marshy terrain roving by our 6-legged robot. First, from the viewpoint of mechanical dynamics, we assumed that the motion of a robot's toe in a marshy ground was described as a spring-damper model, and tried to evaluate this model qualitatively and quantitatively with some experiments. Next, from the viewpoint of fluid dynamics, we measured how the force acting on the toe in a marshy ground as a fluid varied depending on the toe's shape. Our experimental result from the approach of mechanical dynamics shows that the elastic coefficient in the model is nearly-constant. From the approach of fluid dynamics, it is shown that the force applied from the marshy ground to the toe is a generic drag that acts on an object in a flow.

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Legged locomotive robots must be stabilized based on the attitude control especially when they have low stability. Paying attention to a 1-legged hopping robot that is the simplest among legged robots, some techniques such as soft landing, big jump, hopping height control, and attitude control in the air are necessary in order to realize its continuous hopping and moving. In this study, we designed and prototyped a 1-legged hopping robot with 3-DOF (1-DOF for hopping and 2-DOF for attitude control). Then, we examined its dynamical characteristics experimentally.

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Employing a spring element explicitly as a robot leg, we can reproduce the structure of a robotic leg module equivalent to animal's leg with muscles. And, in order to improve the moving speed of such a robot, mechanical structure (hardware) and motion control (software) referring to an actual animal should be taken into consideration. In this study, aiming at clarifying the efficient kicking by the legs of the robot with spring elements, we experimentally investigated the influence of three robotic parameters such as "period of the leg swing", "angle of the leg swing", and "total weight of the robot" on the moving speed. As a result, we confirmed that the relationship between each parameter of the robot and the moving speed was nonlinear and very complex.

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In this study, we aim to develop a light-weight wearable power assist system "Smart Suit" for agricultural work. The smart suit mainly consists of elastic materials and adjustable assist mechanisms. In this report, we installed the motor unit that made the adjustable assist mechanism more efficient in the "Smart Suit", and we did the experiment that measured the potential differences between muscles when there was the adjustable assist mechanism and was not.

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Recently, large scale greenhouses of tomato are constructed in Japan. The environments of the greenhouses are suitable for robotic operations because equipments and planting system are standardized. In this study, a harvesting end-effector which consisted of four fingers and a suction cup was manufactured and tested. Furthermore, external sensing systems to detect fruits at harvesting stage and to monitor human motion for a safety operation.

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Precision Farming practices that required GIS and GPS system are too costly and impractical for small-scale farm. However, site-specific management is still necessary as it contribute in reducing the operation cost and also over usage of pesticides chemicals. A new approach in generating yield and quality map for small scale farm using mobile grading robot has been carried out. A prototype mobile eggplant grading robot was constructed and field test was done. The mobile robot consists of a battery railcar with the grading unit trailer hauled behind. Eggplant fruits were harvested manually and passed to the grading robot. Features information of the eggplant was taken simultaneously with the harvesting location information to create field variability map. Observations found that the constructed prototype robot was capable of accumulating the field variability information during the field test.

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We are proposing an organic cultural method for paddy fields in hilly and mountainous areas. In this method, a small rover (AIGAMO ROBOT) assists weeding work by running and stirring soil in the paddy field. So far, we confirmed the effects of weeding by the robot in experiments. In this paper, we report on the experiment of weeding by AIGAMO ROBOT and the observation of the paddy field from weeding to harvesttime in 2006.

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In this paper, five types of an end-effecter for strawberry harvesting were designed and the results of evaluation tests were explained. As a basic examination, the maximum force for separating a peduncle from a fruit was measured through several methods. As a result, the most effective method was tilting and pulling a fruit. Applying a hook or wire was comparatively better than the method which is pulling a fruit straightly. Based on this result and previous investigations, five types of an end-effecter were designed and manufactured; a vacuum type, a slide type, a pole type, a wire type and a hook type. These instruments were equipped on a robot arm and evaluated using actual strawberry plants. As a result, although a separating performance was good, it became clear that improvements must be made on the performance of soft-handling and miss-harvesting of unripe fruits.

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IT Craftmanship project is planned by ministry of economy, trade and industry in Japan. Our project was adopted last year. The title is "Education of Robots by Making Use of a PIC Micro Computer". This paper describes about content of the project and explains the effect of the program. From the questionnaire consequence of this project, it is cleared that many students are satisfied with this program.

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This project will conduct the education program of the practical engineer as activities support program of proposed type monodukuri literacy education by students. The objective of the program is the establishment of the support system for the emergent monodukuri education in order to bringing up practical engineer with the aim of social contribution due to think about monodukuri literacy themselves. In this paper, the syllabus planning and the effectiveness were reported about the robotics education in classes of junior high school by planning of a student group.

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Classes on handicraft using LED lights were carried out in the lower grades of the elementary school. The classes gave intersts The classes gave children interests in science and technology. LED ligts were effective learnig materials of an introdution education for science and technology. The learning menu with LEDs is continued for some learnings on mechatronics using LED control devices or a robot kit controlled by a micro-controller.

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This paper presents robotics educational materials, a simulator and a textbook, based on Open Dynamics Engine (ODE). ODE is an open source, fast, robust and an industrial quality library for a real-time and interactive simulation of rigid body dynamics. ODE is suitable for developing robotics educational materials. However, there is no book which introduces how to use ODE to make a robotics related simulator written in Japanese, and thus I wrote a textbook which gives basic robotics and how to make a simulator based on ODE. Students are able to tackle the subject with interest by the textbook and the simulators.

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This paper describes the contents and results of our proposal education program targeting the freshman. The education program has a basic course and an advanced course. The basic course consists of three lectures, programming, mechanics and electronic lectures in two months. And the advanced course consists of competition and conference seminar in one month. The new students learned the basic knowledge and technique which are needed to make robots. For example, programming, mechanical design, CAD/CAM system, electronics system, PCB, and so on. When the basic course was finished, a pair of students makes an omni directional wheel type mobile robot "WITH". As the final task of this education program, the team participates in the WITH Competition by using their original WITH. The WITH Competition consists of line tracking, object carrying "Sokobin", hockey game, image processing, and poster session.

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This paper describes an approach for practical education by development of humanoid robots in Kyushu Sangyo University. Students participate in the development of the humanoid robot as extracurricular activities. As one of an achievement goal in the extracurricular activities, the students join in a humanoid robot competition, for example ROBO-ONE.

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We already developed advanced curriculum called MarsTrek and DeepSeaTrek that are based on the activities of distant-exploration with autonomous robots for elementary and junior high students. These curriculums aim promoting student's problem solving abilities and the sense of engineering, especially focused on informatic education. Especially, DeepSeaTrek activities are designed with using the water pool and the robot which moves under the water, so it is very exciting for students actually but very hard to prepare the water pool every time or to maintain the robot to avoid rusting. There are two main objects of The DeepSeaTrek activities; 1) promoting the sense of engineering, including problem solving ability 2) learning basic phisics such as buoyancy, balance and 'action and reaction'. This paper shows the design and implementation of new educational Air-ship autonomous robot. And we also designed the curriculum aiming 1) and 2), called 'SkyTrek', which icluding the activity of building this new Air-ship robot itself.

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We investigated the weeding robot for the green vegetables production with a no-pesticide culture. This robot consisted mainly of a rectangular manipulator, a digital camera, a rotary type weeding end-effecter and a computer. The intrarow detection by the color image processing that was developed with a new block processing method was experimented. As the result, the location of the intrarow space could be measured accurately and quickly and this robot could be control the weed less than 20%.

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The hanging type automatic transportation robot in a plastic greenhouse was investigated. The aim of this truck is to support many farmer works like the heavy products transporting, using the space between the covering plastic film and plants in a greenhouse. It is the devices that are able to follow a worker automatically in a plastic greenhouse, and it transports automatically fruits and vegetables, seedlings for transplanting or cultivation material. Several length of wheelbase of this robot was experimented for stable traveling. And We measured the draft resistance and the vibration using strain gages while traveling each load with supporting wheel or not. As a result, the most stable wheelbase to travel for this truck was 200mm with supporting wheels.

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The objective of our research is to robotize an agricultural crawler tractor based on a previously developed autonomous wheeled tractor. The navigation sensors used for this purpose were RTK-GPS based on VRS (Virtual Reference Station) as well as FOG. The RTK-GPS provided the absolute position of the tractor, while FOG gave its heading angle. The tractor was modified by the manufacturer to allow electronic control of several functions including steering; which was performed by differentiating speeds of left and right tracks.

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Due to the area of the wainari-vineyard in Hokkaido is extremely large, it is very difficult and hard to eradicate weeds by human being. In order to solve this problem, we developed a new dynamic image measure technique which can be applied to the weeding robot in vineyards. The outstanding of this technique is that it can discriminate the weed and the trunk correctly and efficiently. In this technique, we took advantage of the difference of the hardness between the weeds and the trunk. The basic principle of this research is that after blowing wind to the target objects, the computer analyzes the response of the objects by using reduplicate difference. Based on the dynamic-static response, robot could distingish the weeds and trunk.

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This paper reports about young engineer education program between NISSAN MOTOR CO., LTD. and Yokohama National University. The target of this program is to educate a young engineer with practical action ability. This education program consists of both lecturers and young engineers from both NISSAN MOTOR CO., LTD. and Yokohama National University. The educational material is an autonomous car with 4 wheel driving function, which is a good material to obtain the practical action ability. Moreover, it has the possibility to be liked with a dream of a perfect autonomous car.

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The purpose of this research is the development of an educational material for learning robotics; that is, mainly feedback control, and mechanic or electronic structures of robots. Learners of this educational material are assumed in the upper grades of technical colleges or the lower grades of universities. It is no matter whether they have experiences of making some robots. What is given to learners as an educational material is only a manual, and they can build a robot according to the manual. The robot is controlled by a computer equipped with Linux operating system. In the manual, not only the making process of the robot and the way of control, but a principle and usage of each constituent are explained. In fact, a robot was built according to our developed manual. As a result, this manual satisfies the purpose of this research.

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In this research, we report a management system of mechatronics education program. The management flow we proposed and developed is cyclic sequence of Arrangement, Practice, Review, and Succeeding to the Management. We adopted project management method and the cycle of management, called RV・PDCA. Our management had been applied to the seminar for 3rd grade students who belong to Department of Electrical Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology.

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The FPGA image processing system which is small size, high speed, low power consumption is useful in small robot. However, development of the system circuit and HDL code are burden to beginners. To make development easy, it is necessary to prepare the circuit and the HDL code beforehand. This paper describes libraries which are commonly necessary for the system development. The library has circuit and HDL code which interface with camera, microcomputer, and VGA monitor.

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This paper describes a distributed control system for small-sized autonomous robot. We propose the architecture to introduce distributed control system for research environment. This architecture is simple, so it is applicable to teaching material of distributed control study too.

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Presently, the robotics educational materials which can learn the both of theory and practice are few. This paper presents the robotics educational material dealing with position estimation system of the autonomous mobile robot. The material is composed of WEB manual, simulator and mobile robot. The goal of this material is not only theoretical study but to raise the solution ability of problem which it occurs in actual environment.

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We are developing mechatronics education program using the line tracing robots which are controlled by the microcomputer. This program is applied to the freshmen as an introductory course of an engineering experience. This paper describes the result of the lecture of the Department of Electrical Engineering named "Engineering Practice" which adopted these educational materials.

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This paper describes how to conduct the robot assembling workshop for elementary school students, and some of the results of the workshop. The assumed target student for our workshop is an elementary student who could not have an opportunity to assemble a robot kit, but who wishes to do it.

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The purpose of this paper is development of a new experiment system with vehicles style robot. Using the idea sheet and the parts list, students make-up the tire drive vehicles style robot. They change the drive parts from a caterpillar type to a tire type. This change work time uses a method of measurement. The long change time is no good. Many worker needs to change the quick time form one to another parts. It is found that the parts list clear to lack of parts and idea. Several students are not able to make up the tire drive vehicles style robot. The results show that the idea sheet and the parts list are very good and useful tool to design the basic type robot.

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The purpose of this paper is development of the new experiment system for the ITS model and manufacturing systems model by using the LEGO Mind Storms. In this system, the bar-code system are used for a high-level control method. It is found that the optical sensor control software is difficult to many studets to control the vehicles style robot.

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In first grade of Osaka Prefectural College of Technology, mechanism practice is assembles by using Lego MindStorms has been executed for two years. In this paper, we report on the improvement idea of the mechanism as a more comprehensible mechanism. The example using a warm gear, a rack gear, and a planetary gear with a lot of impressions of incomprehensible is prepared.

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In this study, we propose new type of motor module for mechatronics education. In the field of mechatronics education, motor servo module consists of motor, reduction gear, sensor and control circuit is very useful. Although RC servo is its typical application, RC servo remains several limited functions. Therefore, we have developed new motor module that solves RC servo's problems.

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In 2006, the schoolchild learned about energy environment at the Kita-Rokubancho elementary school. As part of energy environmental education, we taught creative art play the robotics education on the theme of a "light". The schoolchild made the art object using paper and the LED equipment of computer control. The schoolchild appreciated the art object which the friend made, and suited, and children made the community of a good relation. Robotics education and creative art play gave the child thinking, creativity, and teamwork.

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We taught robotics for one year at the child invention club. The child is learning from solder circuit to a robot's programming in the classroom once held per month. Instructor worried that a child could not learn together. We thought that study by teamwork was required, and composed the five-person team. The team performed the mini robot contest, helping each other. The child was able to learn many things from this activity. Learning which helps each other deepened an understanding. We think that teamwork is important for training of an engineer.

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A training system for intraoral radiography is highly requested by the dentists who work in dental educational institution. Intraoral radiography is generally used for diagnosing dental diseases. Regardless of that students' skill for intraoral radiography decline, the common training method, using X-ray, film, and human skull model, remain unchanged. We have developed a virtual training environment for intraoral radiography. In addition, we focus on what can obtain an ideal image by bisecting angle technique and add a new function which evaluates X-ray simulation image, in order to enable students to practice themselves. In this paper, we present the system configuration and discuss its functional evaluation before the validation with experienced dentists.

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Continuous Passive Motion (CPM) is a surgical treatment or physiotherapy after surgery or trauma. Most of the CPM devices used for treatment of the elbow joint have one degree of freedom in flex-/extension. For this reason, the patients are limited in pro-/supination of the forearm with flex-/extension of the elbow joint according to the arm movement of the CPM device. In this paper, a novel impedance control scheme of CPM device considering not only flex-/extension but also pro-/supination is proposed. Impedance control is designed for the reference trajectory measured from a normal subject, and the parameters for impedance control are designed in order to suppress the excessive force at the limitation of range of motion. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is evaluated by experiments.

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