Exoskeleton systems have been largely developed though, quantitative performance estimation has not been reported so far. While we have been developing the wearable muscle suit for direct and physical motion supports. The use of the McKibben artificial muscle has opened the way to the introduction of "muscle suits" - compact, lightweight, reliable, wearable "assist-bots" enabling manual worker to lift and carry weights. By applying integral electromyography (IEMG), we showed quantitative performance results and efficiency of the muscle suit in terms of keeping posture. However for practical use, lifting seems to be one of the most important task for manual worker. We then improve the forearm structure so that the muscle suit assists vertical lifting motion of wearer. Load holding and lifting experiments show the muscle suit's effectiveness.

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In this paper, we developed a power assistive device for human elbow motion support by real-time admittance control using EMG signal. First, it was confirmed by the experiment that the main muscle used for lifting is biceps brachii. A two degree of freedom power assistance device is developed, and a real-time control approach based admittance model using EMG signals is proposed. A new control technique for holding down is proposed. Experimental results verified the proposed approaches.

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A center of rotation of a human shoulder joint is changed depending to the posture of the upper-limb. Although there are many upper-limb exoskeleton robots, most of these do not consider the change of the center of rotation of the human shoulder, and adopt the mechanism in which the center of rotation of the shoulder joint is fixed. If a user uses a power-robot with fixed rotation axis mechanism of shoulder joint, the gap occurs at between the centers of rotation of the user and the robot, and user might feel something is wrong. This paper discusses the upper-limb power-assist exoskeleton robot considering the change of the center of rotation of the human shoulder. To design the mechanism, the displacement of the center of rotation of the human shoulder according to the upper-limb's posture is measured. We propose the novel robot having the moving shoulder joint mechanism based on the measurement.

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We are developing a passive power assist supporter "Smart Suit Light". The smart suit light is a compact and lightweight power assist device utilizing elastomeric force of elastic materials. We constructed Motion-based-assist method to design the smart suit light for particular motions. Moreover, we developed an extended musculoskeletal model which has skin segments for analyzing assist force. In this paper, we deal with care motions as target movement. From three-dimensional motion data and the extended musculoskeletal model, we analyzed human muscle forces and assist forces. Then we designed arrangement and property of the elastic materials based on Motion-based-assist method. Furthermore, its assist effect was verified by basic experiments.

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In order to enhance and strengthen human gait, the research of Wearable Robots has been prompted in recent years. Beside designing a suitable structure for Wearable Robot with a powerful, flexible and lightweight actuator, a proper control method is also required. In this paper, we present a control method for knee joint power assist device based on Human Gait's phases. In our method, human gait is divided into two phases: supporting and swinging phase, for each phase we design a different controller to suit its characteristics. At the supporting phase we recognize wearer's intention and estimate assist torque by using EMG signal, while at the swinging phase we use velocity positive feedback control to assist the wearer.

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Wearable mobile base walking assist system is proposed. The assist system estimates human intention: whether he/she will walk faster or slower. The estimation algorithm checks the swing leg motion, the center of pressure on the sole and the value of pressure to detect the change of the walking. These terms can be measured by the acceleration/gyro sensor and the pressure sensor on the wearable mobile base under the foot. The algorithm is simulated on the dynamic simulator employing the human walking model with CPG. The trial production is developed and the experimental result shows effectiveness of the walking assist system.

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This paper proposes a damping parameter determination algorithm for knee orthoses. We construct a walking simulator based on Passive Dynamic Walking. Walking analysis of robotic knee orthosis indicates the possibility that the simulator can detect viscosity parameter which reduces the maximum knee torque difference between slope and flat floor walking.

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The purpose of this study is to develop a device for preventing a misstep, which causes serious injuries. In this study, a wearable walking assist device to support them is developed. Their walk speed and step can be improved by supporting a flexing action of hip joint. To support walking safely and smoothly. The device is required to have a lightweight and simple structure. Therefore a pneumatic rubber artificial muscle which has a lightweight and high power-weight ratio is used as an actuator. In this paper, the structure and characteristic of this device is described. Additionally, the effectiveness of this device is evaluated experimentally.

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This paper describes the development of a socks-shaped fluid powered actuator, which creates flexure motion of ankles in order to prevent thrombosis and drop-foot. In general, pneumatic actuators have a characteristic that the more displacement is produced in their expansion phase, the less force are outputted, which is the opposite of the characteristic of human articulation. In order to solve this problem, it is suggested the device called Λ-drive for creating flexure motion of ankles using an actuator capable of generating constant force. This actuator consists of flat tube and slider. The creating flexion motions of an ankle using this actuator were measured through EMG, showing the effectiveness of the actuator regarding support of ankle motion.

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In our previous work, a wearable robot named telecommunicator has been developed. The telecommunicator can achieve rich communications with a remote person through a small robot. Until now, we developed several prototypes of the wearable telecommunicator T1, T2, T3 and MH-1. MH-1 has human like shape and ability to reproduce the movements of human's arm and head. Currently, we are developing MH-2 that expresses a presence of the operator by 20-DOF motions. In this paper, a 7-DOF arm of MH-2 with the parallel wire mechanism is developed for MH-2. The effectiveness of the mechanism is verified by the prototype model.

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Recently, jumping robots are studied in various organizations because the improvement of the speed of robots, the addition of avoiding ability the of the obstacle, and the enlargement of action range are expected if the jump movement of robots is achieved. And, it is necessary for a robot to adjust its action for the change of the environment. So, this study aims at developing a jumping robot that can jump a long rope. A one legged jumping robot that can change the jump cycle by using the air pressure was developed in the previous study. This paper examines the method of measuring rotational period of the rope by an image processing and the method of controlling the jump cycle by using the measurement results. It is confirmed that the jump cycle of the jumping robot can control appropriately by experiments.

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In the development of robotics technology, the studies on manipulators have been conducted widely. In our laboratory, it has been studied with a 9DOF redundant finger-arm robot system. In this paper, the yoyo manipulation by this system is adopted as a dynamic task with the limber motion of the human upper limbs. This paper also tries to realize the yoyo motion by only position control function of the robot system by using human skills without the yoyo dynamic model. First, human skills in the yoyo manipulation are extracted by measuring the yoyo operation of a human being with a motion capture system. Next, yoyo control algorithm is proposed to apply the skills to the robot, which is implemented to the robot system. Finally, by repeating the experiment, robotic control of the yoyo can be obtained using only force sensor and position control, without vision sensor and the yoyo dynamic model.

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We developed a prototype of mechatronic-system-embedded 'tsumiki' (building blocks) with a shape of 48mm cube consist of "ezomatsu (picea jezoensis)" material. The 'tsumiki' is one of the typical wooden toy, which consists of wooden blocks of various shapes, including cubes, pyramids, and cylinders. These blocks can be assembled, built, stacked, lined, or handled, in any way the player intends. The mechatronic system embedded in a 'tsumiki' is getting started to work with these natural playing motion. The mechatronic system is comped of a PIC processor, a CdS brightness sensor, a megnetic sensor, a tilt switch, four LEDs, a magnets and two CR2016 batteries to drive them, and it is incomporated in to a cube block. There is a holl at the center of each cube surface, instead of a surface that the magnet is settled in. The turn on/off motion of four LEDs are controlled by the PIC processor according to sensor conditions.

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This research is the study of a compact and lightweight robot hand. In this report, we propose the hand that can manipulate a small object dexterously and can perform coin magic such as flourish that needs very skillful, sensitive and dynamic movements.

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This paper proposes a robot which can play air hockey game with a human. The robot consists of a 4-axis robot arm and a high-speed vision, and the robot is controlled based on visual information at the rate of 500Hz. The robot system has the abilities to adjust the strength level and to change the strategy based on the game situation. A system designer can easily adjust these abilities by setting several specified parameters. In this paper, first, the response control to adjust the strength level of the robot is explained. Secondly, the decision-making method using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) is proposed. This ability enables the robot to switch the game plan. Thirdly, the catching motion for the air hockey robot is explained. Finally, we show the data of experiments and verify the effectiveness of these functions.

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The goal of this study is to develop the technology of the robot to reach the goal of a human player for more than 80 percent. To achieve this, we use high speed manipulator, high speed image processing method, real-time and high-accuracy control system. Therefore, we need to measure a puck position accurately through the image processing, estimate the motion of the puck steady with particle filter, calculate the motion of the puck with the law of conservation of momentum. In this paper, first, the position of the puck is measured by removing noise from the image processing. Secondly, the motion of the puck is estimated by using recursive least square estimation, considering the reflection coefficient and rotation of the puck. Thirdly, the trajectory of the arm is generated so as to reach the goal. Then, we show the data of experiments and verify the effectiveness of the system.

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Recently there are many cases that little animals such as homeless cats invade a garden, drop animal excreta and make scratch damages on cars. In this report, we propose a concept of a robot that can recognize little animals, track them and repel them from a home garden.

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This work proposes a study on the development of balloon biped walking robot using buoyancy. We proposed the design method concerning the home service robot as friendly robots. First, the basic experiment to examine the self-weight of the locomotion mechanisms that balanced the buoyancy of the balloon was done. Then, we produced a flexible legs with compact and lightweight drive with thin polyethylene plate and shape memory alloys (FFP-Actuator). To achieve the robot walk, we clarified the relation between the buoyancy of helium and the friction of the robot by the experiment. As a result, the relation between the volume of the helium gas to the diameter of the balloon and the self-weight of the locomotion mechanisms was able to be confirmed. Finally, it was confirmed that the walking distance doubled if it designed by 1.5 times or more respected of the robot by the experiment.

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In this paper, we propose a method of a cooperative guidance running for a man by using two autonomous mobile robots of a parent and a child. A parent robot with a SOKUIKI sensor by a laser is used for guiding a man, and a child robot not having a visual sensor without a rotary encoder is used for transporting a baggage of a guided man. And then, we have been developed a cooperative running method to guide a man to goal by using two autonomous robots of a parent and a child carrying a baggage.

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Robots are introduced in various environments and places such as offices and homes where we mundanely live. Particularly, one of the most expected functions of home robot is the transportation of objects in a living environment. This paper proposes an algorithm of object transportation under environments with objects. This algorithm is an expansion of the object transportation by dipole field algorithm so that robots can flexibly avoid objects. We compute the midpoints of the triangles that do not contain obstacles. We then use Dijkstra's algorithm to compute a path to move the robot to the object, and then compute a path to allow the robot to push the object to the goal using the dipole field algorithm.

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We humans get much information from character strings, so the skill of reading character string is useful for robots on their work. This paper describes a method to read character strings on objects. Robots detect character strings on an object and recognize their 3D pose, then move the object to read character strings easily.

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For robots observing and learning human tasks, changes of objects' velocity and their access, or contingence have been proposed as events that segment human actions. In this paper, we propose a novel event for segmentation, superposition. Superposition can be calculated only with front surface's information of manipulated objects. Additionally, it can be useful in recognizing functions of daily objects. Second, a visual system to track multi-objects and to estimate their superposition is proposed. This system is an expanded template matching which uses an anticipated non shielded image to track an object, a non shielded image to estimate visual changes of an object. Finally, we tested out this system by an experiment that HRP-2VZ humanoid vision system with the estimating system observed a human using a tool in daily environment. This result showed the effectiveness of our approach.

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The purpose of this study is to execute can opening operation by dual-arm robot with cooperated operation. We analyzed the human's operation and generated can opening trajectories for cooperated two arms. We experimented based on the acquired trajectories, and achieved the can opening operation by dual-arm robot. We also compared the motion of single-arm and dual-arm for beverage can opening operation, and found out that these two arm's motions themselves were different, but the operation to the beverage can is essentially the same.

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In this paper, we propose a minimally invasive system in which users can instruct robots to operate variable structure intuitively with three-dimensional recognition including safe operation.

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In recent years, with the development of technology, introduction of autonomous mobile robots to environments close to human life is expected. Examples are shopping cart robots automatically returning to the shopping cart shed after shopping, and guide robots directing the way back to the starting position from the current position in unknown environment. In this paper, we propose a mobile robot system which has functions of autonomous person following and starting position returning. The robot realizes these functions by analyzing information obtained with camera and laser range finder. We verified the validity of the system using a wheel mobile robot in indoor environment.

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We construct software-reusable guide robot system by focusing reusability of RT-component. We divide the guide system into robot-unique elements and not-robot-unique elements by using RT-middleware. Then we design the not-robot-unique elements as reusable RT-component, so as to use it for different robots. Finally, we present a example of reuse of the guide robot system between omni-wheel mobile robot and small humanoid robot.

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The service that it is used an IC device for spreads rapidly now, and IC device is indispensable to our life. However, various problems occur so that an IC device is necessary every service in the current certification system. It is technology called VRICS devised that it is expected to solve these problems. Then, the automatic examination of tickets system was developed as a system that used VRICS from the viewpoint of traffic. Moreover, the student identification card that took VRICS was introduced in KCT. Therefore, new service by the student identification card is requested. In this research, we developed the student identification card service using the gate machine of the automatic examination of tickets system.

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Accompanied by the spread of the IC card is required to secure the IC card system. The virtual social Information infrastructure system is constructed to conduct the proof experiment of Sectoral Model in KCT. As one of the social information systems, the development of the electronic lock system with the IC card was performed. The student identification card is utilized in this information management system. This system is composed of card reader, control unit and arithmetic processing unit.

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In recent years, the number of elderly persons who take medicines regularly has been increasing due to population aging. Since they have many risks of incorrect medication such as overdose, we developed an intelligent medicine case for confirming the types and quantities of medicines. In addition, the algorithm of living condition estimation was created in order to confirm medication timings (e.g. take before breakfast), and the algorithm was installed in the medicine case. iMec has devices that speaker and gesture. But, it is difficult to provide contents equivalent. We proposed that we would use an interface robot with the medicine case. We confirmed that two robots are compared, and participants tend to accept robot's directions more by experiments.

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Service robots working in the human environment have to execute tasks without suppressing uncomfortable feelings to human around them. We give the speed controller to testers and examine the response to evaluate feeling of relief. Some relationship between the user input and the minimum distance between the robot and obstacles can be read from graphs.

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Parallel wires driven mechanisms realize a positioning device with a simple and light mechanism using multiple wires. The large scale parallel wire mechanism, however, generates wire's sag and produce wire's swing by the motion of wire and the suspended object. It is difficult to control the suspended object precisely without considering wire's sag and swing. For the purpose of precise control, this paper propose a motion model of the large scale parallel wire mechanism considering sag and swing of the wires. It is a combination method of a quasi-static model of wires and a dynamical model of the suspended object. Experimental and simulation examples show an effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Parallel wire suspended system realizes three-dimensional movement with very simple mechanism. A wire suspended manipulator is proposed for extending its working space. A manipulator is fixed on a base plate suspended by four wires. In this study, a motion control algorithm for designing a motion trajectory for the suspended manipulator to move to its target point as quickly as possible. The effectiveness of the obtained trajectory is verified by simulations.

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We had developed the three linked compliant joint robot. The robot can absorb large impact force that affect toward the robot from external environment while the robot try to achieve dynamic actions, for example it try to land on ground, to catch heavy objects, or to tumble down the stairs without intention. The robot had equipped with mechanical joint stiffness adjustable mechanism using non-linear spring device named as SAT (Stiffness Adjustable Tendon). The three linked robot arm is not so compact since it has twelve pulleys to lead stainless wire for transmitting power from each motor toward target link. In this report, we aim to assume that it is possible to adjust SAT at high rigidity, near the solid body almost, state from the joint rigidity soft by combining the mechanism named a compliance limiter.

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In this paper we present a cable mechanism which realizes a nonlinear rotational spring from a linear translational spring. The spring is pulled by a cable wound around a non-circular spool rigidly attached to the joint. The non-circular shape of the spool induces a nonlinear relationship between its angular position and the torque created by the tension of the cable. Depending on the non-circular shape, various torque-angle relationships can be realized. We show that for a given nonlinear torque-angle relationship, there is a closed form solution of the spool which synthesizes this function. In a first part, we present the geometry of the problem then derive the methodology to calculate the shape of the spool to synthesize a prescribed torque-angle relationship. In a second part, we verify the design methodology by experiments with three different spools realizing a constant force spring, an exponential softening spring and a cubic polynomial spring.

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For realizing a robot that can help people safely, a musculoskeletal humanoid is an efficient approach. However, it was very difficult to have multiple spine structure because the composition and control regulation were very complicated. Then, we set a goal of making a body trunk having a multiple spine structure like human. In this paper, we approach making "sheet muscles" suitable for multiple spine structure. "Sheet muscles" that move some wires for a motor by using some moving pulleys can realize easier structure and regulation for the body trunk of humanoids than previous "liner muscles" that move only one wire for one motor.

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In the case of playing sports with robot, tendon-driven humanoids have advantages of life size and multiple DOFs. However, they need many data to make their geometrical model on the computer. This paper describes a wearable device which has same muscle arrangement with a humanoid. By using this method, a simple system to move humanoid can be developed. We can use this wearable device to teach motion intuitively. In addition, we put the device an additional blade plate to get human's blade motion. The experiment of moving blade and arm was done with a musuculo-skeletal humanoid.

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In this paper, we adopt tendon-driven and propose to insert a nonlinear springs and an electromagnetic clutch into the tendons. These mechanisms make softness and speediness possible by mechanical stiffness adjustment and using nonlinear spring's stored energy. First, we illustrate the tendon structure consists of nonlinear spring and electromagnetic clutch. Second, we explain the experiment of throwing motion by one-axis experiment arm. Finally, we present the life-size tendon-driven arm with built-in the tendon structure.

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This paper proposes a antagonistic pairs of polyarticular tendons drive system with McKibben pneumatic artificial muscle to simulate a variable stiffness of a human fingertip. The stiffness of a robot finger should be adjusted according to a situation that includes large position errors or collisions, because it tolerates errors of object positions and dimensions in assembly task and absorbs a collision energy in hitting or catching task. The variable stiffness therefore contributes to stable grasping and dexterous manipulation. Besides, a stiffness of a human fingertip can be controlled by consciously contracting antagonist muscles when it does not contact anything such as in a preshaping phase. This study simplifies a tendon drive system of a human finger and then searches feasible parameter settings of the antagonistic pairs of polyarticular tendons drive system through numerical simulations. Finally it is experimentally confirmed that the proposed tendon driven system has similar stiffness to a human finger.

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This paper discusses about the flexible arm mechanism restricting an elastic body by multiple wires. This arm mechanism has flexibility for external force, and the tip position of the arm is determined by the elastic deformation of the flexible object. Although we need to consider not only wire lengths but also the force and moment acting on the flexible object to perform the positioning control, in general, to control the flexible arm the simplified deformation analysis is used. This simplified deformation analysis cannot explain the deformation when external force acts on the arm. In this paper, to clarify the deformation of the arm when external force acts on the arm, the additional wires are used. The deformation of the mechanism with the additional wires can calculate by only wire lengths, and the tip position of the mechanism can be controlled even if external force acts on the arm.

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Recently, pneumatic servo systems have been applied in several systems, such as pneumatic robot systems, aspherical glass molding machines, and a precise positioning stage to isolate vibration. Because air has a number of advantages, including compressibility, high power ratio, and low heat generation. Antagonistic drive is widely used in pneumatic robots to transform linear motion to rotation. However, the drive system is affected by the friction caused by tension and becomes unstable when the stiffness of the system becomes higher. Therefore, the control method and the configuration of the valves for the drive have still room for study. In this paper, we focus on antagonistic drive system with pneumatic actuators. Arrangement of the servo valves, the control method of the system and the influence of tension to the controllability are studied. Experimental results indicated that tension should be set by the minimum tension T_0. We also confirmed that the responsibility of the system can be improved by using the four servo valves for a single joint.

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This paper presents a method for stiffness analysis of parallel mechanism. We propose to introduce virtual screw joints to represent elastic deformation characteristics of links and joints in the mechanism. Each virtual screw joint is determined based on the relationship between infinite displacement of output link and elastic deformation of each component of mechanism. By this idea, precise modeling of elastic deformation characteristics of links and joints, taking into consideration the non-diagonal elements of compliance matrix of a component, is achieved. The pose error of the output link calculated by the proposed method was compared with experimental results and validity of the proposed method was discussed.

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This paper deals with error propagation analysis for the self-calibration of parallel link mechanisms using multi drive linear motors. The self-calibration only uses the internal sensors without using any external sensors. In this regard, the internal sensors have the quantization error. The quantization error is propagated to estimated value of the parameters and causes loss of accuracy of the self-calibration. This study has derived a combination of attitude to reduce error propagation from error propagation analysis. In addition, self-calibration in actual equipment has made use of result of error propagation analysis. The results show that the links can be estimated in the difference of -0.3mm to 0.1mm compared to designed value.

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In this paper, we show that it is possible to improve the control performances of the Stewart platform motion using a dynamic model and a new control method, namely the IDCS. By means of numerical simulations we compare the IDCS performances with traditional control methods. First, we obtain the inverse and forward dynamic models of the Stewart platform motion simulator in terms of the Newton-Euler method and of the Cartesian dynamic model elements of the struts. Second, we perform numerical simulation for attitude control of the platform by means of PID control or CTM (Computed-Torque Method) control or IDCS control. Finally, we verify that the tracking performances and the system responsiveness of IDCS control are superior to traditional PID or CTM control.

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A 3-dof active scanning probe using a translational parallel mechanism (TPM) is proposed. In this paper, the characteristics of the mechanism, optimum design, and accuracy of the TPM are introduced. An optimum TPM design is proposed as the manipulability of the mechanism is equal in all directions. This implies that the force and position sensitivities of the TPM share an isotropic relationship. The working range and the positional resolution of the mechanism are designed as +/-0.8mm cubic volume and 1μm, respectively. An experimental mechanism using the proposed design is introduced. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the TPM, we developed an experimental system for the measurement of the position of the TPM by using image processing. By applying mechanical calibration, the accuracy of the absolute position of the TPM has become 3.4μm.

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A redundantly actuated 3 degree of freedom (xyθ) planar parallel link mechanism (PLM) with back-flip motion (BF PLM) is proposed. The back-flip means that the end plate of the PLM has working area of 180 degrees or more. It aims at the table mechanism of multi-axes machine tools. In this paper, singular configuration is analyzed by using the kinematics of the PLM. By applying numerical analyses, it has been revealed that the back-flip motion can be achieved stably (not singularity) over the working area excluding the upper limit. Prototype of BF PLM and control system are produced. Linear motor of Parallel Drive is implemented to the prototype of BF PLM.

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This paper discusses the evaluation of a precise 3D cam mechanism and the prototyping of a small-sized parallel manipulator using the 3D cam. Generally, actuators of a rotary parallel manipulator are set up sideways on the static link of the manipulator. This causes the static link to become large because the actuators tend to be long. By using the 3D cam, an angular offset between the actuator axis and the joint axis can be created. In this implementation of the parallel manipulator, the actuators are set up vertically reducing the size of the static link and in effect the parallel manipulator.

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An electro-conjugate fluid (ECF) is a kind of functional fluid, which produces a jet flow (ECF jet) when subjected to high DC voltage. It is known that a strong ECF jet is generated under nonuniform electric field, for example, the field with a pair of needle and ring electrodes. This study introduces the ECF jet to develop a novel flexible robot hand. First, we characterize the ECF jet generator which could be a micro fluid pressure source of the robot hand. Next, we investigate the characteristics of the robot finger which mainly consists of the ECF jet generators, a bending actuator and an ECF tank. Finally we developed a five-fingered flexible robot hand and demonstrate that the robot hand can grasp some objects without any complex controller. The height, the width and the mass of the robot hand are approximately 70mm, 40mm, and 50g, respectively.

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We developed a multi-fingered robotic hand with skin mechanism enabling softness change. A soft skin provides a stable grasping by increasing contact area between a hand and an object and absorbing unknown information at the surface of the object. However, the softness absorbs the movement of a target object and disturbs a precise manipulation. We conducted fundamental experiments and analyses based on the experiment to evaluate the effect of the softness on a grasping and a manipulation.

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In this paper, development of a high precision robot using a spring-parallel mechanism is described. The spring-parallel mechanism is defined as a parallel mechanism using large deflective joint elements. A circular spring joint was introduced to a parallel mechanism for testing the concept of the spring-parallel mechanism. Concept, basic analysis, kinematics and implementation of prototype are introduced in this paper.

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The purpose of this study is to simulate the elastic buckling of the structurally simple gripper formed form a thin narrow strip of elastic material. In this study, the gripper was modeled as a series of links connected with torsional springs. Its large deformation analysis was performed based on the principle of stationary potential energy. Analytical results showed that the gripper fingers were rapidly deformed at a certain amount of driving force. This means that the performed analysis can simulate the buckling phenomenon of the elastic fingers, and then the feasibility of the buckling simulation was verified.

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