Safe, robust and reliable technologies are needed for service robots with autonomous traveling capabilities to put them into wide use. Especially, robust localization and safe obstacle avoidance in human-shared outdoor environments are mainly discussed in recent research works. 'Tsukuba Challenge' has been held as a robot competition for autonomous traveling ability in real-world by New Technology Foundation and Tsukuba City since 2007. The task of Tsukuba Challenge 2010 was completing the autonomous traveling in the course which includes pedestrian, park, sidewalk, plaza, bridge, stc. The total distance of the course was approximately 1.1 km. Moreover, Tsukuba Challenge 2010 required avoiding capability against other robots for adaptation to the dynamically changeable real-world. We joined Tsukuba Challenge 2010 as a team "Schuderia Frola AIST" and developed the intelligent wheelchair robot 'Marcus'. The newly-developed real-time obstacle avoidance ability was installed on the robot. This method creates and updates occupancy grid map which records obstacle information from laser range finder (LRF) and generates the avoiding route using A* search algorithm. The effectiveness of the method was demonstrated experimentally in the human-shared outdoor environments in Tsukuba Challenge 2010.

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In recent years, robots are entering into our daily life. Many research have been carried out for human-robot coexistence and cooperation purpose. In our research, we proposed concept for autonomous mobile robot to carry luggage automatically to the destination and return to the original location from the destination automatically. This concept includes two main categories, outward moving and homeward moving. In this paper, we develop a new control method for the autonomous mobile robot to realize the homeward moving. Three basic functions are included in this method, Mapping, Navigation and Obstacle Detection and Avoidance. These functions have been implemented into our robot system, and the experimental result evaluated the effectiveness of our method.

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In this research, it aims at realizing a better course plan by detecting the obstacle in the blind area from a robot. The approach is that, by carrying out specular reflection of the laser to the mirror tape installed in the environment using LRS, the obstacle in the blind area is detected. Thus, the path planning that considers the obstacle in the blind area can be achieved. This paper describes the system configuration, the proposed algorithm, and the effectiveness of the proposed method by experiments.

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The performance of driving system is important for developing automatic driving technology. In this paper, theoretical analyses of turning motion is made and comparison of steering property of two wheel steering (2WS) model and four wheel steering (4WS) model. A 4WS radio car equipped with a small size computer is developed. Calibration of pulse width of the servo for driving front/rear steering angle is completed.

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This paper describes a moving object detection method in outdoor environments. Probabilistic grid map is introduced to mitigate the impact of occulusion. Our method applies x-means to cluster discrete data and track to several objects correctly. In order to track objects robustly and estimate state of objects, particle filter is introduced. The approach is tested in an outdoor environment using 2D laser-range-finder. The experimental result indicates that our system is able to track moving objects robustly.

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In our study group, we have developed a micro air vehicle (MAV). However, it has an inevitable limit of performance due to its low payload and short duration of flight. As a solution to these limitations we proposed the development of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) to be used with the MAV's when deployed for a mission. This study proposed a low cost, simple and light weight system that can detect obstacles such as wall or bumps on the path surface using movable IR range sensors. In addition, this study also proposed an UGV navigation algorithm applying potential method. This algorithms which depends on the data gathered by the IR range sensors leads our UGV to reach destination in unknown areas without human navigation.

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This paper describes time-space path planning algorithms for mobile robots. In usual environments, both static obstacles, like walls and pillars, and dynamic ones, like people exist that prevent a robot from going directly to a destination. Our path planner generates paths considering kinematic and dynamic constraints of actual robots. For efficiency, the planner uses a random search method based on a probabilistic sampling. To avoid both static and dynamic obstacles effectively, we compute a time-space potential field based on a short-term obstacle motion prediction, and then use it as a bias (time-space goal-directed bias) for sampling. A time-space goal-directed bias gives larger weights to shorter and safer paths towards a destination. We evaluate the proposed algorithm in a simulated environment.

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Segway RMP is a mobile robot with its unstable table supported by the principle of inverted pendulum. The robot can move based on the input signal from PC, but it intrinsically changes its pitch angle before movement. The sensors attached to the body are inevitable to change their postures, which may degrade the localization capability. In this report, this problem will be discussed.

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In this paper, we have tried generating a path from the start position to the goal position which is movable with mobile robots. Because mobile robots with wheels cannot move onto a step by the problem in the mechanism, we made a path with considering the gradient of ground level. Q-learning is one of the method witch is often used to planning path. We have made a robot learn to get path which has less gradient of ground with Q-learning. The effectiveness of this method is investigated with an actual robot in the real environment that has steps and slopes. The experimental result shows the effectiveness of this approach.

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It is necessary for an autonomous mobile robot to identify its own position and orientation in an environment during navigation. In this paper, we propose a method of position and orientation recognition based on visual features, and applied a combination of multidirectional images and map information to let the robot achieve a better navigation result. We investigate the performance of the proposed method in a large foyer environment in a building. Based on the experimental results, we verified the effectiveness of the proposed navigation method.

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Obtaining a compact representation of a large-size map built by mapper robots is a critical issue for recent SLAM applications. This map compression problem is explored from a novel perspective of lossless data compression in the paper. The primary contribution of the paper is proposal of an efficient dictionary-based map compression approach employing RANSAC map-matching techniques. We also present several efficient schemes by using preepmtive RANSAC as well as computational efficiency.

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Image-based control is one of robot control methods using a camera and it can control a robot indirectly by controlling only image information on an image plane without using the robot states. In this paper, an image-based trajectory tracking method is described for a nonholonomic mobile robot. Especially, a fuzzy controller is adopted to regard the robot speed, usually assumed to be constant, as time varying one. The controller was tested on simulation experiments. The results of the experiments show the usability of the designed fuzzy controller, giving the improvement of the control performance, such as the reduction of overshoot, the shortening of convergence time, etc.

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Near future, robots are required to play a new role to cooperate and coexist with human. Therefore, this study focus on a high intelligence robot which have autonomous ability. An objective of this study is to construct a quadruped walking robot with a network camera that tracks a moving object autonomously. Thereby, this study explore a mechanism of intelligent robots. As a first study, we propose motion tracking algorithm using a network camera which has a function of video motion detection. In addition, to verify the algorithm, we conduct some experiments such as motion tracking of network camera using the algorithm, changing the behavior of a quadruped walking robot using the algorithm.

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This paper describes a method of outdoor localization which only uses a stereo camera. To obtain a wide field of view, we mount a stereo camera on a pan-tilt head. 3D information from stereo is projected onto a robot-centered 2D grid map. Then building areas are extracted with a support vector machine (SVM)"-"based classifier. The map given to the robot is a 2D map which describes building shapes by lines, and can be edited. We use a particle filter for localization. For each particle, we first apply a hidden line removal to the input map by visibility checking, and then calculate the likelihood of the particle by matching the map with the local map. The proposed method is successfully applied to real outdoor data.

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This study addresses a tour guide robot aimed at the explanation of several exhibits for tour participants in the science or art museum. This paper describes about the identification of exhibits by using maker recognition and the decision making for the tour guide robot. The maker recognition was implemented using the OpenCV libraries and the AR maker. The configuration of tour guide system using this robot was introduced. The experimentation with the proposed method was performed about the maker recognition and the decision making to three AR maker patterns. Experimental results showed that the sufficient ratio of recognition and the possibility of the exhibits identification by using AR maker.

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This paper describes a method of making maps using appearance and range information, which are used for mobile robot navigation. SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) methods are often used for mapping. We propose a SLAM method using SIFT features appearance information. We show by experiments that using both appearance and range information improves the localization and map accuracy regardless of the amount of available SIFT features. We also propose a localization method using the generated map and appearance and range information from stereo, and evaluation its localization accuracy.

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This article deals with development of an image filter which can preserve edges of objects. In general, utilizing image filter make edges of objects in a camera image dim to reduce the noises. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an image filter which reduces noises and also preserves edges of the objects. We developed the image filter which eliminates noises and preserves edges by the image estimation based on the maximum entropy principle. The performance of the proposed filter by using the SNR compares. The results show the validity of the proposed filter.

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In this paper, we propose to use the Bag-of-Features technique for View-based Navigation. Recently, View-based Navigation attracts our attention, since the navigation releases us to set landmarks for mobile robots. The conventional studies focus on tracking along the target path and do not pay attention to both recovery from failure of navigation and scalability to add a new navigation course. The proposed method solves these two issues by relying on quick image retrieval using Bag-of-Features technique. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for these issues.

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This report proposes a navigation method consisting of localization and path following by appearance-based SURF. In general, SURF has a weak point in changing brightness by the sun. Therefore we have improved SURF in order to achieve robustness against the brightness. Previously, a robot memorizes the appearance images on the path of a map representing nodes and links, and then accomplishes autonomous navigations. In the localization, the robot can estimate a position of every node based on only the appearance images without its own odometory. In the path following, the robot can also control its own attitude on matching between the current and memorized appearance images. The report is dedicated to the experimental evaluation of the accuracy and robustness of our method based on experimental data collected in various environments.

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This paper proposes a method to perform 6-DOF SLAM by using scan matching based on the three-dimensional distance information acquired by omnidirectional stereo vision. Acquired scan is evaluated by the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm, then the result is integrated by the extended Kalman filter (EKF). Evaluation of the proposed method is done by the experiments on a simulation environment. The evaluation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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We demonstrate the effective object search in unknown 3D environment by using Object Co-occurrence Graph (OCG). The proposed OCG is automatically constructed from many word-tagging images provided by millions of Internet users. It describes the co-occurrence relations between objects. Since the small target object is difficult to be recognized due to insufficient image's resolution or occlusion problem, the finding of large objects which relate to particular target object will be more appropriate. This large object is so called cue object since it provides hints about target object's location. In our approach, robot solely depends on visual information; visual grid map and proposed object detectors, for its task. Moreover we also show that the employment of OCG can actually make the searching task become easier, reduce operating time, and minimize the robot's movement trajectory.

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This paper discribes a vision-based personal navigation in outdoor environments. Since localization is indispensable for navigation, we use a view-based localization method. This method compares the current image with an image sequences taken while moving along a route to follow, and determines the current location as the one where the best-matched image was taken. For the image comparison, we choose a set of locations on the route and generate a classifier for each location using SVM (support vector machine). The orientation of a camera continuously changes when the person moves with attaching the camera to his/her head or body, and this may cause a matching failure. We cope with this problem by using an omnidirectional camera. By extracting and testing perspective images in several directions in the omnidirectional image, we search for the direction for which the best matching is obtained. We also deal with the navigation for routes with corners by extracting images for the direction to turn. We developed a personal navigation system consisting of a notebook PC and an omnidirectional camera, and validated the on-line navigation capability of the system in an actual outdoor scene. It is also shown that the system can cope with the orientation changes of the camera and the navigation at corners.

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It is important to recognize the Landing point to move the autonomous Radio controller helicopter. In this research, it is a purpose that the Radio controller helicopter recognizes the Landing point automatically by processing the image.

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The purpose of this research is to detect moving object from outdoor mobile robot in motion. The robot acquires 3D data by using stereovision at a high speed. Our proposed approach contains the removal of road surface from the 3D scanned data, extraction of moving obstacles and estimation of their center of gravity is executed. After that, motion vectors of the obstacles are finally obtained.

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This paper aims at the development of autonomous mobile robot system with capability to detect people in outdoor environment. This time, a tracking method based on Kalman filtering and Mahalanobis distance is investigated. Some experimental results using a mobile robot with laser scanner is presented.

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In this paper, we propose a speed control system for autonomous mobile robots using long-range road estimation. Our speed control determines velocity from the width and distance of the road surface obtained by the projective transformation of the result of road estimation. Our proposed method adapt to various environments. Moreover, it is effective to moving objects. Experimental results show that efficient movement can be performed by proposed method.

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One of necessary functions for a guide robot is to detect persons around it. We propose the method that enables a robot to detect multiple moving persons even if the robot is also moving. The robot has an omni-directional camera and a laser range finder. First, skin-color and hair-color extraction based on image processing technique is done and the multiple candidate regions of persons are obtained. Then, template matching is applied to range data corresponding to the candidate regions. Thus, the robot can determine the exact person regions. Experimental result basically shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Recently, robots are developed to support people's work in home and office effectively. Especially, it is hopeful for robots to act for the transportation of heavy loads in office. In this research, a robot that automatically transports an object in various sizes and shapes is developed. To accomodate the different lifted height of an object, the lift up mechanism is small sized and has a high width of expansion and contraction. A large object can be transported by two or more robots. In such a case, the locomotion control and the obstacle avoidance become difficult. Therefore, robots control an object in a holonomic manner by assembling an offset of the developed robot and experimental results.

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This paper describes a development of light intelligent collector machine of forest thinnings. Effective utilization of residual wood in the forest land is essential for reforestation. Although the country currently has a vast amount of unused wood left in the forests, there are difficulties in collecting these materials. One reason for such difficulty is the enormous logging cost, which does not make economic sense. To tackle this problem, a low-cost and efficient logging method is desired. In our study, an experimental logging system for forest thinnings was produced and field-tested to verify its effectiveness and issues. As a result, the study found that the machine was able to run on the ground covered in snow or rough slope and log wood of about 20cm in diameter and 4m in length. On the other hand, the grapple presently available was unable to keep its grip on more than one wood. It was also found, among other issues, that the crawler tended to rotate on relatively bigger bumps and therefore required a reveiw on the stopper structure for anti-rotation.

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In cooperative object transportation by mobile robots, complex motions of robots are required. Therefore omnidirectional mobile robots are suitable for the cooperative transportation. Most of existing omnidirectional wheels have complex mechanism, and are not practical. Active-caster wheels features simple mechanism and high positioning accuracy, and they will enable the robots to carry out more accurate object transporation. In this study, a cooperative object transportation system with two active-caster-wheeled robots is implemented. The effectiveness of the system is evaluated through experiment.

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The maintenance and management of mountain forest needs special knowledge and skill, and contains various dangerous tasks. Thus, the shortage of workers and aging of manager cause the problem of increasing unmanaged forests. In this research, we are developing "Teleoperated mountain forest maintenance robot system", which assist human work semi-autonomously. In this paper, we will design a recognition method of positions and diameters of forest trees, based on the sensor fusion of a camera and a laser range finder, and discuss localization and mapping problem using surrounding trees. The experimental results illustrate the validity of the proposed method.

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3-dimensional trajectory planning using model predictive control with constraints is proposed for mobile manipulators. The proposed method employs Quadratic Programming (QP) with constraints for optimizing control inputs. The control inputs and outputs are limited corresponding to the hard ware spec of the mobile manipulator. The torque, the angle velocity, the mobile base velocity, the tip of hand velocity and acceleration are included in the constraints. The control optimization is performed in real-time. Real-time trajectory modification is demonstrated on a real mobile robot.

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A mobile manipulator consisting of an omni-directional mobile platform and a six d.o.f. manipulator has been developed. Since the platform has four suspension mechanisms for its wheels, the tip of the manipulator has positioning errors when the manipulator changes its posture or external forces act on it due to the suspension mechanisms of the mobile manipulator. Therefore, the displacement of the platform and the stiffness of the suspensions is analyzed and how to determine some kinematic parameters are discussed.

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This study addresses the human following control of a porter robot in order to support the carrying some heavy package. This paper was proposed the following control method by using several ultrasonic sensors and adopting the inverse kinematics of a wheeled skid-steering mobile robot with the velocity vector. Application example of the porter robot, an asphalt pavement repair support robot was applied this proposed method. The repair operation of an asphalt pavement was performed the limited space, hence, it was necessary to consider a limitation on movement of robot. The experimental results demonstrated that human following characteristic of the robot was satisfactorily, and the proposed method was the effectiveness, even if the situation with a limitation on movement.

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A wall climbing robot that dismantles huge spherical gas tansk is needed to avoid placing workers in dangerous situations. It is indispensable that the robot can adjust the magnetic force depending on the gas tank surface and generate enough adhesive power to avoid falling while preventing consumption of exessive driving energy due to excessive adhesive power The present study has developed a four-wheel wall climbing robot, "BEETLE-I", which has six permanent magnet units which can generate 6000 N t maximum. Each unit is able to change its height from the wall, and the data is used to generate enough adhesive force depending on the surface of the all. The robot is 675×470×100 mm in size and about 42 kg in mass. BEETLE-I and the effectiveness of the control system are verified by demonstration experiment on experimental wall.

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This paper presents sensor-based navigation of wheeled mobile robots in outdoor environment. In order to sense its surrounding environment and own location, the mobile robot is assumed to be equipped with a laser range sensor and GPS. A potential field method is utilized to create force fields around obstacles (repulsion force) and goal (attraction force). Look-ahead control is adopted to steer the mobile robot in which a reference point located in front of the robots is dynamically changed such that the mobile robots able to success fully maneuver among the obstacles and reach the goal. This approach was adopted to participate in Tsukuba Challenge 2010.

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A pump that is capable of transporting high-viscosity fluids and solid-liquid mixtures is required in disasters such as flood and liquefaction, and in various industrial settings including sewage treatment plants and food plants. Turbine-type pumps and piston-type pump are often used to transport high-viscosity fluids and solid-liquid mixture fluids. However, these types of pumps have disdvantages. Turbine-type pumps cannot exert a high discharge pressure; piston-type pumps are usually considerably large, because high pressure is needed to transport large quantities of fluid. Furthermore, it can be difficult to arrange the bent pipes required by these systems because of high friction between the fluid and the pipe walls. Hence, an innovative transport system is desired. In this paper, we focus on bowel peristalsis as a model for a mechanism that can transport fluids, such as sludge with little water. We developed a peristaltic pump based on the bowel mechanism by using an artificial rubber muscle and confirmed its capabilities.

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Although physical interaction between individual components plays an important role in autonomous decentralized control systems, a systematic way of designing it is still lacking. To alleviate this, we focus on the locomotion of earthworms, and propose a design scheme based on the physical locomotion using a continuum model, and we derive an optimal force distribution that enables efficient locomotion. We propose a decentralized control scheme on the basis of the optimal force distribution, and we investigate its validity by simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed control scheme allows the robot to locomote efficiently.

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This paper proposes a method of turning for sidewinding locomotion of snake robot. Sidewinding locomotion is employed by a snake in the desert. It was shown that this locomotion can be generated by a repetitive traveling wave. However, most study of this locomotion is realized only straight forward locomotion. Sidewinding locomotion is considered as a curve along an helix of cylinder. We propose method to turn a direction of snake robot by changing a form of a snake robot from helix of cylinder to helix of cone. In addition, we consider a center of turning point to make a snale robot turning around arbitrary radius. We applied this method to the snake robot. Experimental results of a turning radius and turning speed are shown.

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The mechanism of multi-articular muscles that contributes to the emergence of animal behavior has not been clarified thus far. To address this issue, we focus on the slithering motion of snakes, which have numerous antagonistic muscle-tendon chains that span several tens of vertebrae. From theoretical analyses on the basis of the continum model, the acceleration of the body in the longitudinal direction is found to be proportional to the number of segments spanned by each muscle. On the basis of this theoretical result, we propose a decentralized control scheme for the efficient locomotion of a multi-articular serpentine robot. We conduct simulations using this control scheme, and the results show that the locomotion efficiency increases as the number of segments spanned by each muscle increases.

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In Japan, taking advantage of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, attentions gather and are developed by the rescue activities of the disaster victim using robot. Each feature of the rescue robot was investigated, and its attention was paid to the peristalsis performed as move mechanism replaced with them when earthworm is movement. In precedence research, the robot which uses retentivity with wall by expansion and contraction of segments, and moves forward was manufactured. But, there was a fault that it could not move if there is no wall in right and left. In this study, the purposes are manufacture of the robot which can move forward by grounding with the ground and development of the mechanism which took movement in pipe into consideration.

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We development the hexapod robot HARo-III as amphibian probe vehicle. However, we had a problem in waterproofing and lacking torque in the HARo-III to drive it by a motor. Therefore, we paid attention to artificial rubber muscle as actuator. This artificial muscle has high output density and is excellent in waterproofness. In this paper, we suggest two leg structures of a hexapod robot which applied artificial muscle (A pulley type and a diagonal type). And both structures are compared about the lift amount of the foot and support force by the approach from a theory. As a result, the diagonal type is made compactly, having the same performance as the pulley type.

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It is considered that the quadrupedal musculoskeletal system plays an important role in the dynamic locomotion such as jumping, running, and so on. In order to achieve the dynamic locomotion, we have developed a quadruped robot with musculoskeletal system that is driven by pneumatic artificial muscles. Based on this mechanical system, we realized running by bounce gait on a simple control manner. In the detail, experimental results show that a flexible backbone structure coordinates the movements of foreleg and hind leg during running. Here, we found that the active driving of the backbone is important for the dynamic locomotion of a quadruped.

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The traveling wave type omni-directional mobile robot (TORoIII) imitates the snail locomotion mechanism. An advantage of this movement mechanism is to be able to do a stable run because the landing area is large. The other omni-directional movement mechanism has the fault that is eacy to slip, but This robot can do the stable run by imitating locomotion mechanism of a snail. In this paper, we proposes the method of omni-directional locomotion for TORoIII and the method of path tracking based on potential method. In addition, we conducted the running experiment using these method. As a result, the running of TORoIII could be controlled.

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Recently, many pipe accidents have been reported. These were caused by corrosions or deteriorations, so in-pipe inspections have been performed with fiber scopes to prevent such problems; however, they cannot be inserted into pipes that are greater than 15 m in length or into complex pipes. Therefore, in-pipe inspection robots are required for such uses. In this paper, we are developing a robot capable of propelling itself through various pipes, such as long pipes and elbow pipes, specifically, a peristaltic crawling robot using DC brushless motor and screws for in-pipe inspection. In addition, we performed a experiment in 27 mm diameter acrylic straight pipes and an aluminum elbow pipe to see if the robot can be pass the elbow pipe.

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Recent years, number of patients of lymphatic edema witch crisis after having an operation for breast cancer are increase. Now, air massage machine use for taking care of lymphatic edema. But, there are some problems, for example, weight is very heavy, and sound is too loud, and so on. Then, using PVC gel actuator that has a feeble sound and light weight solves the problem of air massage machine. So, this study, we develop new contraction type of PVC gel actuator and make its driving characteristics clear. After that, we make a massage machine using PVC gel actuator that we proposed for taking care of lymphatic edema.

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In recent years, a robot's activity is spreading in the care spot or a home life. The robot that interact with humans not only requires high output but it should also be safe and flexible. To satisfy these requirements, we adopt a pneumatic artificial muscle as an actuator of robot manipulator. The pneumatic artificial muscle is lightweight and high power output. However, a McKibben-type artificial muscle commonly used for this purpose is problematic; therefore, we develop a straight-fiber-type artificial muscle that surpasses the McKibben type in regards to the output. We also develop two degrees of freedom artificial muscle manipulator with a differential gear mechanism. Moreover, we propose a control system for this manipulator about joint angle and stiffness.

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This paper explains how to design and develop a robot hand (Kanazawa Hand II.) The major character of this robot hand is that it is able to fold its palm that is very important for stable enveloping grasp. Also, this robot hand has been developed according to the principle of the movement of a human hand. With the function, the robot hand can grasp an object along the object shape with smaller joint torques.

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This paper observes the effect of behavior of mobile robot on group behavior of soldier crabs. Especially, in this paper the mobile robot interacts with eight soldier crabs. For the experimental analyses, this paper adopts four settings. In the first setting, there are only eight soldier crabs in the field. In the second setting, there are the stationary robot and eight soldier crabs in the field. In the third setting, there are the continuously moving robot and eight soldier crabs in the field. In the fourth setting, there are the stopping and moving robot and eight soldier crabs in the field. These experimental results are analyzed by fluctuation index. From the analyses, only fourth experimental fluctuation slope differs from other experiments. This result suggests that the stopping and moving robot has influence on soldier crabs.

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In recent years, sports engineering has become an active area of research. It has produced important contributions to the development of sports of many kinds. Studies on skiing turns are researced from various viewpoints and the mechanism of the skiing turn using the skiing robot is clarified. Nevertheless, despite considerable research, mechanisms of skiing turns remain to be completely elucidated. Furthermore, mechanical models derived using the approximate expressions do not match an alpine skiing turn and results are not reflected concretely. To facilitate theoretical considerations, a passive-type skiing robot with a variable height mechanism of gravitational center is developed. Some influences on skiing turns such as the position of gravitational center are examined easily by using this robot. In this paper, it reports on their experimental results.

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