A reliable navigation and localization system for outdoor mobile robots must be robust against environment variation. In this paper, we propose a navigation method of recording disorder magnetic field as magnetic map. An azimuth causes disorder by the magnetic substances. However, the robot characterizes and uses the disorder of the magnetic field among environment in the proposed method. This magnetic map is built with a three axis magnetic sensor before the navigation of the robot. When the robot navigates, it localizes by matching data of the sensor with the data of the magnetic map. The experimental results show that the robot is able to go around the same trajectory by the proposed localization method.

抄録全体を表示

In this paper, we purposed we a new approach for robot Self-Localization in indoor and outdoor. The approach is based on RSSI of mobile phone. First, we repeated experiment six times that is RSSI reproducibility measurement of PHS when the robot was moved 1000 mm in straight. Second, we measured RSSI of PHS in 2D small area (300mm×300mm). The result shows recognized RSSI of PHS in different environments and it is able to Self-Localization with high-resolution and sufficient accuracy. Alternatively, it make a RSSI map, we could detect a change of RSSI in 2D small area. The experimental results indicate that the robot is possible to localize accurately based on our proposed method and by applying the localization result to compensate the odometry, the cumulative error can be eliminated.

抄録全体を表示

Sewer pipe exists in our familiar environment, however, which is one of dangerous and severe spaces for direct human operations. The tasks in sewer pipe such as inspection and maintenance should be taken over by autonomous or remotely operated vehicles. We have been working on a sewer pipe inspection robot "KANTARO" which has a special structure to go through pipes with curves and junctions. In this research, we develop a simplified map generation system to identify the robot position by using passive arms, which consists of encoder, angle sensor and link with spring. The map generation system is evaluated through simulations and experiments.

抄録全体を表示

This paper presents an approach for vehicle indoor localization using odometry and an IEEE 1394 camera facing upwards. The motivation of this work is the automation of autonomous mobile robots working in a production plant where artificial landmarks have to be reduced as possible. An extended Kalman filter is used for vehicle localization where odometry is corrected using the ceiling characteristics. The camera is used to extract the ceiling orientation which is used to correct the accumulated error in orientation. The contributions of this work are twofold. To report the use of the ceiling as a landmark and to report the effect of bearing only correction for vehicle localization. Experiments were performed in corridors of buildings 3L and 3M of the University of Tsukuba where vehicle localization was achieved with a precision within about 30 cm.

抄録全体を表示

This study proposes a new camera system for environment recognition and self position identification for a planet exploration rover. The system is composed of cameras which have a rotational and translational mechanism. Thus, it can take plural image-pairs according to their rotational and translational motions without rover motion. This paper explains how to set the reference angle for rotational motion for cameras. To demonstrate the essential feature of the proposed system, some experimental results are shown for the decrease of wrong correspondences for feature points.

抄録全体を表示

This paper discusses the Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) which integrates odometry and scan matching. The developed mobile control system has the parallel processing procedure such as localization, trajectory planning and navigation control. The scan matching algorithm efficiently finds the orientation of a mobile robot by using Hough Transformation. The proposed algorithm localizes a mobile robot more accurately by the MCL than by separate localization based on odometry or scan matching.

抄録全体を表示

This paper proposes retroactive particle filter method and modularization of the method. Retroactive localization is one of problems of localization. If the localization system corrects current position using past measurement data, then the localization results may estimate wrong position. In the case, localization system needs to estimate position retroactively. This paper discusses retroactive localization problem on partile filter, and proposes modularized retroactive particle filter that estimates position using multiple sensor with time delay.

抄録全体を表示

Rehabilitation for upper limb is important for stroked patients and the aged people with motor disorder. In this paper, we describe about the development of evaluation system of motor function for upper limbs using 3-D rehabilitation robot "EMUL" and brain function imaging method "NIRS". On this system, we developed a tracking training program called "Eight Vertex Reaching Program". 7 healthy adults excised this program and we recorded motion data and brain function data of these subjects during this training. Then, we could observe subjects' learning processes against the training. And we could know which place of cerebral cortex activated about leaning processes of the training.

抄録全体を表示

The rehabilitation systems using force display system is useful for rehabilitation of upper limbs. However graphics displayed on a monitor of existing rehabilitation systems has a low level of visibility. Now to solve this problem, using Augmented Reality (AR)Technology has been suggested. AR will enhance a level of visibility and make it possible to measure joint angle like wrist angle which is important for rehabilitation of upper limbs. In addition, AR application for exercising bodily movement in diet has been developed.

抄録全体を表示

The body weight support treadmill training (BWSTT) is a tool for gait trainings, with which patients walk on a treadmill and their weights are supported. We developed a new BWSTT system which can control its supporting point depending on the user's gait and supporting weight with a magnetorheological fluid brake (MRF Brake). Our system improved some problems practical BWSTT systems have. We conducted validation test of the prototype with healthy person. Validation was to compare the normal walking under no body weight support walking and the body weight supported walking by using an electromyographic (EMG) measure and some data from the control of movable mechanism. Through the validation test, we confirmed the effectiveness and safeness of our BWSTT system.

抄録全体を表示

The increase of aged people in society and their physical deterioration has become a social problem in many countries. For example, in Japan more than two hundred and fifty thousand people have stroke every year, and many of them are paralyzed. Early detection of functional deterioration and sufficient rehabilitation training are necessary for such patients. In general, therapists make rehabilitation programs based on an inspection and a measurement of each patient. However, it is difficult to adopt the appropriate rehabilitation programs for all patients, because the evaluation method is based on experiences of each therapist. Nowadays, Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) is required strongly in the field of rehabilitation. In this study, we developed new grip device with vibration around wrist joint for upper limbs rehabilitation systems. We developed two different grip model and evaluated their performance. And, through the clinical evaluation by normal person, we verified the effectiveness of new grip device.

抄録全体を表示

In recent years, the number of stroke patients has been increasing. The rehabilitation systems for upper limbs using force display system are expected to quantify the effect of rehabilitative training, and can enhance the motivation of an operator. A passive-type force display system uses only brake, and ensures high safety. It can display resistance force by using brake. Magneto-Rheological fluid (MRF) is one of the functional fluid and its rheological properties can be controlled by applying magnetic field. So, MRf Brake has good responsibility and high torque. In this paper, we describe development of New type MRf Brake which is cpable of generating High Torque by only one disk which is holed like a ring and its magnetic field analysis by ANSYS

抄録全体を表示

There are many patients of ataxia: paralysis caused by brain stroke or asynergia. Early detection of functional deterioration and sufficient rehabilitative training are necessary for those patients. The rehabilitation support systems for upper limbs using force display system are expected to quantify the effect of rehabilitative training, and can enhance the motivation of an operator. Especially, the application of a passive-type force display system is desirable for its high safety. However, there are some directions and positions for which it is difficult to display the force because of using only passive elements. To solve this problem, we have developed a rehabilitation system for improvement of controllability using redundant brakes had been suggested. In our study, we evaluate force display function of this system and propose directional guidance training for upper limb movement using this system.

抄録全体を表示

This paper proposes gyro-offset and wheel radius estimation method using estimation results obtained by particle filter. Wheel radius and gyro-offset are important parameters of localization methods. One of solutions to estimate these parameters is to add these parameters as probabilistic variables to a probabilistic localization method. However, computation time of particle filter is depend on particle number and that number is incleased by degrees of freedom of parameters. This paper describes simple solutions of wheel radius and gyro-offset estimation based on particle filter and several experimental results.

抄録全体を表示

This paper describe a view based localization method for mobile robot. Our proposal system use ground image as landmark to estimate of robot position. Using ground image as a landmark has several advantages that have many occasions to observe a landmark in crowd because of less occlusion and easy to create a map because of the 2-D plane. Our proposal system create a ground map by overlaying the ground images and estimate the robot position by maching feature points between the observed images and the ground map images. We realize a highly accurate self position estimate by resolving the problem of feature points matching such as feature points error and image saturated by sunlight.

抄録全体を表示

This paper is presented about study of the measurement accuracy with the angle of direction by an omnidirectional camera. There is it as one of the ways a mobile robot acquires the ambient information. In self-localization of the mobile robot using this omnidirectional camera, the improvement in the measurement accuracy of an angle of direction is important. However, there are few papers by which the accuracy about measurement of the angle of direction by an omnidirectional camera is described. Therefore, we consider the measurement accuracy of the angle of direction in an omnidirectional camera, and study the technique of improving it.

抄録全体を表示

This paper presents an efficient exploration strategy for the self-localization of omnidirectional mobile robots based on particle filtering. It is a challenging task to identify the robot's global position in a workspace based only on local sensory information, especially if there exist multiple locations where similar measurement signals are obtained. A popular existing technique called Active Localization, which chooses the next action so as to minimize the entropy of the expected posterior distribution of the robot's position, cannot be directly applied to particle-based localization, since entropy cannot be evaluated easily when a probability distribution is expressed by particles. Instead, in the proposed method, the robot moves to a position where the variance of" the expected measurement signal is maximized. The variance of a particle distribution is easy to compute and therefore the proposed method is well suited to particle-based localization. The proposed technique is tested in an in-door environment.

抄録全体を表示

This paper describes a wide long-range visual map building using geometrical information and image appearance, which are observed by a stereo camera, for autonomous mobile robots. In this research, long-range polar map that has multiple resolution of the radius direction is introduced, in order to use far area of terrain classification data effectively that has an huge error that grows quadratically with range. The traversability analyzing approach that reduces the influence of observation noise and a classification error is proposed. In this approach, texture information is classified into traversable or not by Support Vector Machine to analyze from near to far area of traversability. Predictive probability of classification is calculated to reduce failure of terrain classification and traversability analysis. Simultaneously, accurate analysis of traversability near a robot is accomplished by estimating planes of each grid from point cloud. Finally, our system was experimented in outdoor environment.

抄録全体を表示

Map information is important for path planning and self-localization when mobile robots accomplish autonomous tasks. In unknown environments, they should generate their environment maps by themselves. An omnidirectional camera is effective for environment measurement, because it has a wide field of view. There are binocular stereo and motion stereo for measurement by omnidirectional camera. However, each method has advantages and disadvantages. Then, in this paper, we aim to improve accuracy of measurement by omnidirectional cameras using binocular stereo together with motion stereo. Experiments showed the validity of the proposed method by the mobile robot equipped with an omnidirectional stereo camera system.

抄録全体を表示

Our present study aims to establish a method for estimating the position of a mobile robot traversing irregular ground. More specifically, we apply simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) using a laser range finder (LRF). We derive an expression to estimate the position of the mobile robot relative to a fixed landmark using the LRF. We use two poles for the landmark in our experiment. We confirm the effectiveness and accuracy of our proposed technique by both simulations and experiments.

抄録全体を表示

Several rehabilitation robots for upper limbs have been proposed so far, and clinical effectiveness was reported in several studies for the aged people or patients with stroke. However most of them have only 2-DOF for its active motion. It is important to design a rehabilitation system which trains in the 3-DOF space because the upper limbs of human work in 3-DOF space even expect for the wrist. We developed the quasi 3-DOF rehabilitation system which has 2-DOF force-feedback function in working plane but its working plane can be adjusted the inclination. And we named it PLEMO. In our current study, we've developed PLEMO-P-series (PLEMO-P1, PLEMO-P2, PLEMO-P3). In this study, we've developed new upper rehabilitation support system PLEMO-P4 which will come into practical use in some rehabilitation clinics and healthcare facilities for the elderly. In this paper, we describe the mechanism of PLEMO-P4 and a new application software.

抄録全体を表示

Several rehabilitation robots for upper limbs have been proposed so far, and clinical effectiveness was reported in several studies for the aged people or patients with stroke. However most of them have only 2-DOF for its active motion. It is important to design a rehabilitation system which trains in the 3-DOF space because the upper limbs of human work in 3-DOF space even expect for the wrist. We developed the quasi 3-DOF rehabilitation system which has 2-DOF force-feedback function in working plane but its working plane can be adjusted the inclination. And we named it PLEMO. In our current study, we've developed PLEMO-P-series (PLEMO-P1, PLEMO-P2, PLEMO-P3). In this study, we've developed new upper rehabilitation support system PLEMO-P4 which will come into practical use in some rehabilitation clinics and healthcare facilities for the elderly. In this paper, we describe the new evaluation index and examination that I introduced into an application put on PLEMO-P4

抄録全体を表示

Furusho laboratory of Osaka University has been developing many 3-D rehabilitation training systems with high safety by using robotics and virtual reality technologies and functional fluid to quantify the effect of rehabilitative training. However, we had only 2D display that is hard to recognize depth even using 3D working robot. For this problem, we were settled by drawing shadow however, it was difficult to judge depth for subjects. Therefore we introduced a 3D display that becomes easy to judge depth because 3D display offers more reality visual sensation. We researched on recognition performance of visual sensation for 3D space using training system "EMUL" and 3D display.

抄録全体を表示

In recent years, the number of stroke patients has been increasing. The rehabilitation systems for upper limbs using force display system are expected to quantify the effect of rehabilitative training, and can enhance the motivation of an operator. A passive-type force display system uses only brake, and ensures high safety. It can display resistance force by using brake. For this force, the system must display the force in the opposite direction. However, the system cannot display this opposite force in some cases. In this paper, we research the mechanism to display the opposite force to all motion direction at all posture. And we describe a rehabilitation system for upper limbs: NEO-PLEMO, which use this mechanism.

抄録全体を表示

Forearm caster walkers, a kind of walking aid, are usually used for life support and walking rehabilitation in hospitals and nursing homes. Wheels and casters under this device help users to move smoothly, but at the same time it will cause falling accidents for physically fragile elderly people. In order to prevent falling accidents and unexpected movements of the caster walker, we have developed the intelligently controllable walker (i-Walker), in which magnetorheological (MR) fluid brakes are installed for direction and speed control of its wheels. The i-Walker also installs a generally-used web-camera in order to recognize a line drawn on the floor and trace it. This paper describes an image recognition method for a target line and a control method to trace the line. To validate the function of the i-Walker, clinical tests for physically fragile elderly people were conducted. The experimental results show that this device properly controls its direction if it is needed.

抄録全体を表示

In this project, we have developed virtual haptic simulators that can simulate several kinds of abnormal movements and haptics of the disabled people. In the previous report, we proposed a leg-shaped robot (Leg-Robot) with a Compact MR Fluid Clutch (CMRFC) to establish highly safe human-machine co-existent system, and control methods to realize ankle clonus. In this paper, we report experimental results in which young students of the physical therapy and a matured physical therapist used the Leg-Robot. According to the comparison of these results, we were able to find obvious differences and these facts would verify that this system can quantify the diagnosing techniques for physical therapists. Additionally, we have conducted to introduce a neuromuscular model to control clonus-like movement of the Leg-Robot for education of physiology. In this paper, we describe a trial of reproduction of the ankle clonus by introducing the neuromuscular model in computer simulation.

抄録全体を表示

We developed a human in loop integration system for our wheelchair mounted robotic arm, with a brain machine interface utilized as the interacting device in an attempt to enable the aid for users with limited motion ability in activity of daily livings. In order to enable a reliable use of the brain machine interface, operation status of the manipulator are defined, an intelligent supportive module is also exploited, which utilizes neuronal signals dentification result and also face expression to generate an binarized command code input, that are then used to drive the transition between operation status of the manipulator. The corresponding motion control action will be executed due to the transition of operation status.

抄録全体を表示

In Japan bumpy yellow color tiles are layed along sidewalks to guide visually impaired people. However, these tiles do not exist on the roads making it difficult for a blind to cross the street. To cover above mentioned issue, this paper addresses the technical feasibility of a guidance system in street crossings by ultrasonic sensors.

抄録全体を表示

An EMG controlled intelligent orthosis was developed to support the rollover movement of cancer bone metastasis patients. In this paper, the validation of the developed signal processing algorithm to recognize the rollover was focused. Firstly, the ElectroMechanical Delay (EMD) of the internal oblique muscle was measured as the about 65 (msec). Secondly, it was confirmed that the rollover movement was recognized about 65 (msec) before the movement started. Therefore, the developed Micro Macro Neural Network (MMNN) recognized the rollover movement using the EMG signal as quick as possible.

抄録全体を表示

In this article, we try to improve a characteristic of wheelchair motion at inclination road using the power assisting system with sensing the inclination of terrain and calculate the optimal torque for the assist. The inclination along the traveling direction and lateral direction are effected the motion of a wheelchair. The system we made is sensing both inclinations with gyro and acceleration sensor and overlap the both canceling torque for the inclinations of traveling and lateral direction.

抄録全体を表示

The purpose of this study is to develop the robotic orthosis for post stroke rehabilitation. Robotic therapy system is expected for more intensive, quantitative rehabilitation setting. For upper arm therapy, therapists often facilitate trunk and shoulder girdle to stabilize a root of the upper arm kinematics. Therefore, therapists also request a robotic system to stabilize and control seated posture before they move to upper arm and hand facilitation. So, authors thought that we should develop the robotic system for shoulder and trunk control in reach-to-grasp rehabilitation. The mechanics of the shoulder part of the robotic orthosis was designed by utilizing the trajectory analysis of the scapula orthosis. The analysis found the mean axis around the motion of the scapula orthosis, of which the axis was estimated as a simple pin joint within acceptable residual. The mechanics of trunk part has 3-degrees of freedom for forward bending, lateral bending and twisting of trunk motions. The mechanics of the twisting motion was realized by trapezoidal link mechanism to follow a definite motion range. The robotic orthosis was installed on seating frame to support seated reach-to-grasp therapy in post stroke rehabilitation. The shoulder and trunk orthosis was connected to the frame with additional hip joint, and forward trunk bending was driven by link mechanism extended from seating frame structure. Here, the robotic orthosis has 5-degrees of freedom for driving axis in scapula, 3 motions for trunk motion and hip joint. Joints were driven by servomotors with force sensor, in which the motors were controlled by admittance based method to follow subject's motion. Additional recording system was developed to analyze reach-to-grasp motion with a force plate for detecting reaction force from feet and a goniometer for capturing upper arm angle. In this report, we present the robotic orthosis for stroke rehabilitation and show a preliminary result of reach-to-grasp analysis using the robotic orthosis.

抄録全体を表示

A prototype of omni directional vehicle for handicapped children has been developed in our research group. In this investigation, we implement the line trace function to the omni directional vehicle for the children of low operation ability of omni directional vehicle for handicap, in order to safely realize the moving experience.

抄録全体を表示

This paper proposes a method for detection of human ID and accurate position estimation simultaneously in an intelligent environment. In the proposed method, a human being with an acceleration sensor including ID number is tracked by laser range scanners distributed in the intelligent environment. Human walking activities are measured and associated between laser range scanners and an acceleration sensor. The first experimental result shows a possibility of data association between laser range scanners and an acceleration sensor based on human walking time, number of steps and distances.

抄録全体を表示

In recent years, communication network and computer technology enable to create a home network. Therefore, we are developing intelligent house that supports daily life of the elderly people. The elderly people are supported to utilize network that indoor environment control. We propose to reduce the operation burden of elderly people. In this paper, we report robot as man-machine interface to communicate between humans and network. Then, we describe the house of voice control, emotional recognition using voice, development of fall detection using LRF. Our experimental results were confirmed that it was valid for house control system and fall detection system.

抄録全体を表示

This paper describes development of Automatic Door Device as a part of intelligent environment. This device, Robo-Door, can release home robots from door opening/closing task and serve for handicapped humans as well. The characteristics of the device are (a) easy installation by a wheel actuation, (b) compatibility of automatic motion and human manual handling by a clutch mechanism. It was shown by experiments that Robo-Door achieved open/close operation of a door on typical three kinds of floor materials and had enough safety against collision with humans and robots.

抄録全体を表示

This paper proposes a method for localization of a mobile wireless client, such as smart mobile phone, in a multistory building using strength of received signals from wireless LAN access points. This method uses public wireless LAN access points which are settled three-dimensionally in the building. The method supposes that humans and robots do not change height of the mobile client on each floor in the building when they move the mobile clients. The position of the mobile client on the floor and the floor number in the building are estimated simultaneously. Experimental results show feasibility of the proposed method.

抄録全体を表示

A mobile robot must have functions of localization and mapping for navigation. In order to achieve these functions, SLAM algorithm is widely used. However, there are both of dynamic objects and static objects in living environments of human. It is necessary to extract only static objects for achievement of stable SLAM without effects from dynamic objects. In this paper, distributed laser range scanners in an intelligent space are used for SLAM algorithm. Grid maps generated by distributed laser range scanners are applied for removing dynamic objects from results measured by a LRF on a mobile robot.

抄録全体を表示

This paper describes a power supply tap which can acquire power consumption history and control the power supply of home appliances plugged into it. Besides it has shape and apperance that user can put on accessible place (e.g. a television rack). It can be utilized for a power monitoring and controlling system. The system realizes comfortable, safety and energy saving condition by on-off contorlling of ready-made home appliances. In this paper, development of a prototype of the tap (iTap) is introduced, and as some typical application examples of the iTap, following three services are described to automatic on-off control of ready-made home appliance. (1) Classification of home appliances whether on-off control is acceptable, (2) automatic on-off control by association analysis and (3) automatic off control by detection of abnormal power consumption via clustering.

抄録全体を表示

In this study, measurements of experiments of weight detection in real environment have been made. A real time multi-camera system was used to measure the motion of the lifted bottles during weight detection. The size-weight illusions were confirmed in most groups for almost all subjects. Results of the lifting height, velocity and acceleration of the bottles are computed and an interesting relationship between the motion information and the rate of illusion occurrence are analyzed.

抄録全体を表示

This paper investigates chaotic properties of snoring sounds by a correlation dimension analysis, which is generally used to verify the existence of chaos in a time series. The ultimate goal of this study is to extract useful information from the nonlinear properties of snores so as to diagnose obstructive sleep apnea. For such purpose, many researchers have examined snoring sounds by linear frequency analysis such as Fourier Transform or Linear Predictive Coding, but the chaotic properties of snores have not been clarified so far and the existence of chaos has not yet been proved also. The authors adopt Grassberger-Procaccia method to determine the correlation dimension of snore attractors quantitatively.

抄録全体を表示

In this paper, we attempt to analyze relations between motion and eye movement in order to explain mechanisms between human motion and cognition. The Muller-Lyer figures were horizontally presented and movements were implemented either foveal and peripheral vision of the target on these experiments. Based on the study, this article describes an interaction between eye position and upper limb movement.

抄録全体を表示

This paper presents that the measurement equipment of the plantar deformation during walking and the method for extracting and tracking feature points from a plantar image. The equipment consists of aluminum frames, an acrylic board, and the 4 cameras, and can take a large image at high speed. The two methods of extracting and tracking feature points are proposed, and the two methods are verified which is suitable by experiments. At the end, feature points are extracted and tracked from the partial plantar image using the proposed method. From the result, the extracting and tracking from the image captured by the equipment by the proposed method is succeeded Consequently, the plantar deformation can be measurement.

抄録全体を表示

It is well-known that a system modeled as a more-than-triple integrator cannot be stabilized by manual control in a continuous manner. The presentation focuses on experiments using a computer-simulated triple-integrator object. First, it is shown that the object can be stabilized by additionally displaying its predicted position, although it cannot be done only by its current position. Then, the influences of prediction time, manipulation gain, and display gain are examined. The results indicate a trade-off of performance between transient responses and regulation tasks.

抄録全体を表示

For effective cooperative control of manual-controlled semi-autonomous robots, cooperation of two humans controlling one differential 2 wheel object is investigated. Experiments has been performed using a graphic simulator and a pair of lever-type control devices employing 3 subjects. Two types of tasks are adopted: differential drive tasks where each of two subjects controls each wheel of the object, and steering-speed control tasks where one controls the translational speed and the other steers the object. The results show that different types of cooperation can be observed using both the types of tasks.

抄録全体を表示

Recently, the study of Ubiquitous Robot (UR) is one of the hot topics in robotics field. The UR can support service robots and mobile robots from an environment. Moreover, human can also be supported by UR. Each device is independently distributed in UR environment. When these devices are controlled such like Feedback, time synchronization is one of the important technologies for this control. In this paper, the wireless time synchronization module is proposed as one of the solutions of time synchronization for distributed devices.

抄録全体を表示

An intelligent room which recognizes gestures and support operators is required in various places in recent years. In this paper, we propose a method to recognize mouth motion from images. The proposed method uses shape features and low resolution images of mouth region and recognizes mouth motion for indicating a target object in an intelligent room. DP matching is applied to low resolution images. Several experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

抄録全体を表示

This paper describes a method for acquisition of object data by autonomous robots using ID devices attached to the object and range data of environments. To obtain the IDs from the ID devices using the ID reader, a motion generation for acquisition of IDs is required; the range of the ID reader for communication with the ID devices is smaller than that of the vision system. The paper focuses on the integration ID devices of the identification data and measurement data from the vision system. The robots generate the motion for acquisition of the IDs of the devices based on the measurement data which is acquired using the stereo vision system. We show feasibility of the proposed method through the experiment for estimation of object pose.

抄録全体を表示

This paper describes a simple but robust human interface for smart environments which are spaces with many distributed and networked sensors and actuators. Smart environments have to recognize requests from users to provide the desired services and it is desirable that the user can request the services through natural interfaces. Therefore, a suitable human-smart environment interface is needed. In this paper, since a sound can be easily detected by using distributed microphones, we focus on a sound based human interface and utilize the pitch information of the sound. The frequency of sounds is considered as a trigger to call a service, i.e. a service is provided when the system detects a sound which has the corresponding frequency. The proposed approach is tested using various sound sources. The experimental results show that the developed system is able to recognize the sound robustly even in the presence of environmental noise.

抄録全体を表示

In this paper, we present a new approach to improve an angular resolution of a laser range finder by using a pan unit. In the case of using a laser range finder in large area applications (e.g. map building, detection and tracking of surrounding objects), since a laser range finder radiates laser beams from its center position, the density of the laser beams becomes sparse at a far distance from the laser range finder, which causes the lack of the data points at a far distance. Therefore, we set the pan unit beneath the laser range finder and made it pan by a higher angular resolution than that of the laser range finder and compensated for the lack of data points at a far distance. Experimental results show that we can increase the number of the obtained data points from the laser range finder even if objects are far from the laser range finder.

抄録全体を表示

Three-dimensional position information is essential in order to give appropriate support for human beings in an intelligent space. Distributed cameras in an intelligent space have to be calibrated for acquisition of three-dimensional position. Since calibration of many cameras is time-consuming, camera calibration method for easy construction of an intelligent space is needed. This paper proposes automatic camera calibration method based on image features and 3D information of minimal calibrated cameras. Image features and 3D positions are shared with uncalibrated cameras via network, and these cameras are calibrated with common image features. In this paper, the first experimental results with SIFT (Scale-Invariant Feature Transform) as image features are shown.

抄録全体を表示