Many moving robot to search in disaster site has been developed. However, carrying robots in disaster site is dangerous. Operators may injure him during carrying in. If robots are able to throw in disaster site, it is safety and easy to carry robots. The purpose of this study is to develop a durable robot. Thus, we developed quadruped robot with spherical shell. The shape of the shell was chosen by the structural analysis and the prototype was manufactured. This study reports confirming that the robot can walk in a motion experiment.

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This paper describes the suggestion of in-pipe mobile robot can inspect pipe inside without excavation underground gas pipe and so on. Manufacture the green caterpillar type in-pipe mobile robot using suction brake for correspond to various the pipes inner diameter. This robot used pneumatic actuator which is advantageous in powor-weight ratio. This robot imitate structure of abdominal prolegs and movement of the somites of the green caterpillar. The inspection by in-pipe mobile robot is necessary to reciprocate the inspection section to a robot runs by oneself. The inspection is needed to runs not only straight pipe but also right angle pipe and pipe such as a three-forked road. So I executed motion experiment in laying pipes form of various. Paper report this experiment results.

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Nowadays, pipes buried under a road supply houses with water and town gas. Pipes must be periodically inspected in order to prevent the accident caused by leakage of fluid in pipes. We have proposed inspecting pipes using by green caterpillar type in-pipe mobile robot. The robot is structured by three somites and four suction brakes. The somites imitates the waving motion, and the suction brake imitates the proleg of the green caterpillar. The somites movement and the act of clinging to pipe all using by suction brakes uses pneumatic pressure. The pneumatic pressure is feeded to the robot from air comprresor and vacuum pomps through air feeding tubes. Now, we derive equilibrium of forces using by dynamics models of moving robot. As a result, we can predict traction force of the robot.

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This paper describes the suggestion of the green caterpillar type in-pipe mobile robot. The robot applies pneumatic actuator made of the rubber. The bellows actuator is an actuator expanding and contracting axially. We used it for a robot because power-weight ratio was good. To grasp characteristic of pneumatic actuator, we confirmed that analysis of characteristics of rubber was effective for design of the robot.

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In previous works, studies of the Complex moving robot with a combination of legs and wheels have been reported. However, they will cause upsizing of the structure and increases of weight by increase in the number of actuators and the complex mechanisms. In this study, we developed a small and lightweight robot with a high mobility and cover ability.

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The purpose of this research is to develop the new rescue robot for increasing the locomotion efficiency in a disaster area. We propose the robot system which consists of rescue robot, control device, sensor, battery, wireless device and control PC. The robot has two mechanisms for locomotion; one is for smooth place locomotion and the other is irregular ground locomotion. We adopted all-directional locomotion with Omni wheel as a mechanism for level surface locomotion, and the leg walk with 6 legs as a mechanism for irregular surface locomotion. From the verification experiment, we have checked that it could move by each mechanism. We are going to experiment of walking for irregular surface.

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This study discusses the development of robot for an assistance of disaster relief work. Our robot has a spherical shell for omnidirectional moving mechanism, and it is a double layer shell for water proof function. Drive mechanism installed in the inside of inner shell is composed by four drive units that combine a motor, a drive wheel and a friction wheel. This robot can move by friction between the inner shell and the drive wheel. Some flexible resistive elements attached on the outer periphery of outer shell can achieve amphibious mobility capability. Small camcorder and wireless devices are mounted on the inside of the inner shell. Remote control of robot is possible by this equipment. Some experimental result demonstrated the validity of amphibious mechanism of our robot.

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The paper describes the development of a spherical rolling robot actuated by internal rotors that are placed on three orthogonal axes. The driving principle for such a robot exploits non-holonomic constraints to propel the rolling carrier by using inertia of the rotors. The design of the robot with symmetrical placement of the rotors, keeping the total center of mass in the center of the sphere, is presented and initial experiments are reported.

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DMC is a type of mobile robot, the most significant characteristic of the robot's structure is that the robot has no tires and no reduction gears. The basic principle of the robot's moving mechanism is that the robot is driven by frictional force based upon the sliding contact between the motor shaft and the ground surface. In this study, the original miniature DMC is enlarged and extended in purpose to serve commercial uses such as power assistance. An enlarged DMC expressed problems such as destroying its contact surface when the ground surface is softer than the DMC surface. To counter the problems, extended DMC was developed. Afterwards an experimenting device was made to study the problems and characteristics of the enlarged DMC and extended DMC. It was concluded that DMC has more propulsive power compared to extended DMC, and that amount of propulsive power achievable, rely on how much pressure is concentrated between the two surfaces and coefficient of friction. There are still many unknown factors and more experiment need to be done. A DMC power assist carry-bag was built. When tilted DMC propulsive power changes. To figure out the mechanism hypotheses where made and factors were found, but more factors still need explanation.

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Wall and ceiling robots have been studied for being applied to cleaning, inspection, rescue and so on. For expanding applications of climbing robots, their weight capacity will become one of bottle-necks. We focus on the active friction force, which in this paper we define as a friction force exerted by actuators such as motors. The friction force increases proportionally with the reaction force which is normal to the surface. By exerting a force by actuators, we can expect to increase weight capacity. This paper presents development of a device for gripping an uneven surface of a wall or a ceiling by friction forces for climbing robots. This mechanism includes passive restoring forces exerted by rubbers having a large friction coefficient and active friction forces.

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Aging society in recent years, we propose using home-robots in house. But if these home-robots used in two story house, robots need to have a method of going up stairs. Last year, we realized that robot's whole body moved on bump. The method is rotated robot's body ninety degrees from bumps edge using only right leg. Simply motion can move quickly and easily. But this motion is difficult to control. So, we suppose to new motion that can exact control and move in stabilization. In this research, we used versatile robot "SRL-Bowkun". This robot is small humanoid robot and has twenty five degree of freedoms.

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This paper describes a new mechanism that will realize a stair-climbing robot within small size. The mechanism was named "SMART" after the concept of this mechanism, "Simple Mechanism Adaptive for Rough Terrain". Some statical conditions to realize a low height mechanism that is driven by only one motor were derived. The prototype robot that equips a SMART mechanism had been designed and manufactured actually. Experimental results show that the estimated output torque is close to the measured torque. This paper describes the result of analysis of the mechanical efficiency.

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In this paper, we presented the experimental validation of rolling motion of a tensegrity robot, which consists of 12 compressible elements and 48 tensional elements formed as a tensegrity structure. The robot is able to accomplish a rolling motion by deforming its overall shape. Firstly, the design and manufacture process of the tensegrity robot was introduced. Secondly, the feasibility of rolling motion was experimentally validated by deforming the robot's overall shape. Finally, based on the experimental results, the robot design was improved and validation experiments were performed again. The presented robot has 38 facets and 3 patterns for contacting with floor. In the current situation, the robot can only accomplish rolling motion with few particular contacting facets. More possibilities of contact facets for rolling motion will be investigated based on experimental results in our future work.

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Snake-like robots which have flexible body, and wheels or tracks powered by motors have shown high traversability on rough terrain, therefore they have been expected to be used in practical applications such as search and rescue. However, slender snake-like robots have a problem that they easily rotate around the roll axis and turn over in challenging environment. Thus, in this paper we discussed methods to recover from falling over. Firstly, we showed an automatic recovery from falling over based on an attitude sensor and rolling motion. Secondly, we proposed a method in which the robot made a zigzag shape, pushed the wheels against the walls and obtained propulsive force. This method allows the robot to recover from falling over in a narrow straight path. The feasibility of both methods was verified by test of a snake-like robot ACM-R4.2.

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The spherical shaped cross-section crawler has been done in the previous research. The unit is featured by generating two orthogonal oriented driving forces by contacting of the external environment. However, the previous unit had no continuing surface or no strong constructional support material. In this research, omnidirectional crawler unit with the soft silicon belt is proposed to cope with this issue. The crawler unit is composed of two curved crawler belts whose inner and outer trajectories of the belt are same length are newly introduced. The prototype model is designed and developed. The basic motion of the prototype is confirmed experimentally.

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In this study we used SEMG that can be derived from the skin surface. It is well known that any kind of hand motions can be identified by analyzing forearm SEMG patterns, and the results of this identification are used in order to control some devices. In this study, a robot hand control system that has a feedback loop of power was developed and assessed.

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Objective of this study is development of a BCI (Brain Computer interface) system using noninvasive EEG (Electroencephalogram) that is measured from the scalp. In this paper, We described about an our developed EEG measurement system, measured EEG of holding right hand by using this system and analyzed in order to find the features. From results of experiments, I think that our system will be useful for the study of developing noninvasive BCI system.

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EMG measured the skin surface is widely used as an information source to determine various types of body movements. And there are many research results that use forearm EMG to detect hand motions. However most of them only can detect hand motions and cannot detect muscle power for each motion. In our EMG system, we suppose that muscle power is proportional to the amplitude of EMG. The power is estimated and the grip power of a robot hand is able to be controlled using estimated muscle power in our system. In this study, we developed a system to detect the pressure distribution applied from the object was grasped by the grip force control of robot hand using EMG

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By using rotation one of the polarization characteristic, it is possible to measure the sugar content in the media, and it is used for quality control of medicine and food sectors mainly. So far, polarimeter that used this property has been developed. (However, in the polarimeter that has been on the market, device to display real-time measurements is complicated and expensive because it takes time to process the data. In this study, we developed a rotation measurement system that is simple and can be displayed the value real-time.

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Recently, the research to measure the optical characteristic of the biological tissue by nondestructive is paid to attention. In the biological sample, the intrinsic birefringence that originates in an intramolecular atomic arrangement, and the birefringence cased by the photoelasticity because of the transformation of the living body cell tissue are observed. In this study, a birefringence polari-scope to observe such a biological sample is developed. In addition, this paper describes about birefringence image obtained by actually measuring.

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EMG measured from the skin surface is widely used as an information source to determine various types of body movements and there are many research results using forearm EMG to detect hand motions. In this filed, detected results are used in order to control some equipments like as an artifical hand. However most of them only can detect hand motions and cannot detect musucle power for each motion. If the power that is generated from musucle is able to be estimated by measured EMG, estimated results will be useful to control equipments. In this paper, we talk about our developed method that can estimate muscle power of pronation of hand and movement outside times of hand.

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This paper proposes a three-axis attitude and two-axis position sensor using a laser light as fixed coordinate. It consists of a beamsplitter, plane of projection and camera. Its structure is simple and compact. We show its structure and principle of measurement. The width, length and height of the developed sensor are 47.5 mm, 70 mm and 32 mm respectively. We have experimentally verified that the sensor can measure three-axis attitude and two-axis position.

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This paper proposes a strain visualization sticker using a moire fringe which can display characters and fringe that correspond to a magnitude of strain without the use of electronic elements, such as amplifiers, strain gauges and wires. The sticker makes it possible to read the rough strain value of the concrete surface directly by visual inspection and enable remote, noncontact measurement of strain using a camera. The structure of the sticker is simple and its fabrication is inexpensive. The results show that the sticker provides the strain information by characters and accurate numerical value of the strain using image processing.

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Our objective of this research is the development of methods that can be able to establish BCI using EEG that ismeasured using surface electrodes. BCI is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain and anexternal device. In this time, I developed a method to choose the EEG to control it. So, I will report on this.

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In this paper, we propose a method for measurement speed-up of surface compliance distribution using a mirror rotated by a stepping motor. The proposed system pushes a target object by converged ultrasound generated by an ultrasound phased array. This system is able to measure more than 1mm displacement to overcome mechanical noise added by the stepping motor driving the mirror. This performance allows distinguishing liquid surface from solid surface. For further improvement, it is necessary to suppress the mechanical noise. We survey the theoretical scanning speed limitation of displacement distribution measurement taking account of non-zero transition time of the pressed surface and the finite pressing area.

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In this paper we described the balloon walking robot of soft legs mechanism in consideration of familiarity with human relations. The robot has the flexible blade spring mechanism which imitated the sport artificial leg in addition to heart-shaped appearance. This robot was designed for human support robot which is used in care worker, in order to use for prosthesis. This robot consists of three unit, interconnected by the soft joints of leaf spring legs mechanism and balloon. The three units are driven by on-off control using SMA. We propose the robot which controls buoyancy and explain walk operation of the soft lightweight robot.

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This paper describes a novel personal robot to support active human life by assisting transportation. The proposed robot is able to follow a person with bringing the luggage. Therefore, the robot encourages the elder people to go to outside for shopping, visiting friends and so on. In order to realize these requested specifications, the robot has to achieve both small footprint for coexistence with people and high traveling performance to follow a person. In this paper, the method for tracking and following a person are proposed to realize robust person following at speed as ordinary walkers. The proposed tracking method based on extended Kalman filter is able to track peoples around the personal robot using the data from laser range finder and the robot velocity as inputs. The following controller is based on direct following. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is verified through the experiment using the new prototype robot.

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Move-it is active paperclip system that transforms traditional paper into an active digital medium by adding content recognition and automated actuation. Each paperclip consists of a polyester plate and shape memory alloy (SMA) as an actuator, and photo-reflectors as sensors that recognize the ID each sheet of paper has. Every stroke can be tracked by Anoto pen and addressed to a unique page because each sheet of paper has a unique dot pattern for the capturing. The pen transmits the recorded strokes to the system, which then converts the strokes to digital text and classifies them. Whenever a paperclip is activated by the system, the SMA shrinks and provides us with real-time feedback through active physical deformation of the paper. Our goal is to transform paper from a static medium into an active physical tool that provides real-time feedback for temporary storage, communication, and reminding.

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Sphere-shaped robots are expected to be useful in that they can move around in home or office environments without getting stuck even in a dusty room with a lot of obstacles. Besides, it is desirable that one can move omni-directionally and that its body has enough space to carry additional functions such as sensors. Until now, various types of sphere-shaped robot have been proposed and studied. However, few of them satisfy both the requirements at the same time. Thus, this study proposes a new driving scheme employing an omni-directional three-wheel internal unit, in order to make it capable of moving omni-directionally providing large inner space. Then, for constant velocity movements, conditions for speed references of three wheels are derived, so that the internal unit runs smoothly without making any slippage against the inner surface of the sphere. Finally, a prototype robot is developed and the validity of the conditions is examined through experiments.

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In this paper, a motion recognition method for cooking support system is proposed. First, the position coordinates of each joint in cooking are markerlessly determined by using the distance sensor in Kinect. Then the cutting operation is recognized by SVM (Support Vector Machine). Further, by concentrating on the interval of holding a knife, we greatly improve the recognition accuracy for cutting operation. This result implies the great application potentials for human-machine cooperation in the future cooking support system.

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In this study, we aim to achieve robot motion to break an egg by a single robot arm. Eggs are often used for cooking. The study of breaking an egg by the dual-arm robot has been done until now. We consider adequate motion to break an egg by using a single arm robot. The arm makes a crack on an egg by hitting it to an edge of a frying pan, opens the shell of the egg by hooking it to the edge of the pan, and the content of the egg is dropped into the pan. We confirmed that this task was successfully executed only by using a single robot arm with generated motion.

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In this paper, we introduce 3D-viewer-based teleoperation system for manipulation task of Human Support Robot HSR. The system is integrated by three functions; 3D environment information visualization based on manhattan-world assumption, known object recognition using LINE-MOD algorithm, and virtual teaching with 3D robot model using interactive marker. We show some experimental results of manipulation tasks using proposed system.

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We developed a service robot that picks up everyday objects. The robot is equipped with a small manipulator and a Kinect sensor. A role of the robot is to collect objects which lie scattered on the floor of a room before a cleaning robot (Roomba) works. The robot uses not only a sensor mounted on it but also one laser range finder (LRF) installed in the room. By this, the robot can find objects and move to the grasping point efficiently.

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We introduce a novel robot system "Shader Printer Robot" that can print graphics on everyday objects and environments. Our system exploits the persistence and states of color changing materials as a physical framebuffer for graphics on arbitrary surfaces. Graphics produced with our system last without requiring energy and are rewriteable. These unique properties enable various applications in which traditional display; projector or manufacturing technology is not feasible.

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In everyday life, it sometimes occurs the collision between people at corner. To spread robots to the society, the collision at corner between the service robot and the human is a problem which we need to solve. The collision is dangerous. The purpose of this study is to prevent a collision at corner between the service robot and the human. We aim to make the system to prevent the collision. First, we analyzed the human behavior, for example, walking velocity, walking path, walker's visibility at corner, distance to stop from the recognition. In this paper, we report the results of these analyses.

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When a humanoid robot supports human life in an real environment, it is indispensable that she acts on the life sound. In this paper, we build a robot system in which users can instruct what the life sound robot is hearing at the time and how robot should operate for it, and execute the action corresponding to the recognized sound easily via a tablet interface.

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Object manipulation is essential for robots to do various tasks. It includes moving an object in contact with the environment. In order to do this manipulation, the force exerted on the surrounded environment is important in addition to the position where the object is moved. In our study, we enable an interactive marker to show and control a target force. Furthermore, in order to save and reproduce manipulations, we propose object manipulation model, which is made up of target positions and forces. We can get models by directing robots with interactive markers. Finally, mobile manipulator experiments show that we can instruct robots and moreover by using object manipulation models we can easily give instructions to them.

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The goal of this work is the development of a robotic system for dressing assistance, which is one of the toughest tasks for carers. Because of clothes' flexibility, manipulation of clothes easily fails. For example, a robot cannot pull up pants if the pants catch the toe of a care-receiver. In our system, the current state of the clothes is recognized using optical flows, which illustrates the expansion and contraction of the clothes. The system compare the current flows to the ones in a preformed database, which stores many visual features at success/failure states, to decide if the robot should redo the motion with another trajectory. We tested our system in an experiment to put pants on persons by a humanoid robot. These results suggested the effectiveness of our approach.

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Records of attendance are very important for companies or schools. But usually, it managed by humans at school. By the way, web application consists of client-side scripts and server-side scripts. Client-side scripts use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as a programming language. Similarly, server-side scripts are used PHP, Perl, Python, or Ruby in a general way. Node.js is one of the web application platforms for server-side JavaScript. In this study, we check up the development approach with Node.js, and the attendance management system is developed as web application.

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A lot of researches on inverted pendulum cart are done in recent years. And it is attracted as a personal vehicle which realizes energy saving for many practical applications, such as the Segway and the P.U.M.A. The personal mobility has the advantage of energy efficiency for transportation because the cart is small and light. However, since most conventional personal vehicles require a certain level of physical ability from the driver, it is not suitable for elderly and disabled people to drive. Therefore, as an inverted pendulum cart capable of driving to anyone, I develop an inverted pendulum cart with a sliding mechanism for posture control, and aim for realization of acceleration and deceleration while keeping perpendicular cart angle. In this research, proposed inverted pendulum cart with a sliding mechanism for posture control was designed and manufactured, and the posture control performance was verified through experiment.

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This paper described about practical evaluation and functional design of small self-control mobile robot. A new architecture for controlling small mobile robots with GPS is described. We designed and developed small self-control robot with simple computational machine for future Mars investigation rover. Many trial tests for practical requirements were proceeded for each elements of body structures, electric circuits and software programs. The result using small rocket laden a mobile robot was verified durability of body design and reliability of robot control system.

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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. And they need high positioning accuracy. The same can be said of potential method for cooperative object transportation. But, most of existing omnidirectional wheels have complex mechanism, and are not practical. Generally, they have low self localization accuracy using internal sensors. Because it is hard to measure a movement of free rollers. On the other hand, an active-caster wheel feature simple mechanism and high positioning accuracy, and I enable the robots to improve self localization accuracy. In this paper, I propose the cooperative system using self localization with active-caster wheeled robots.

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In this study, we show the new design of omnidirectional mechanism which was named ACROBAT (the Active-Caster omnidirectional RObotic drive with a BAll Transmission). The previous mechanism is ACRO (Active-Caster omnidirectional RObotic drive). ACRO has two motors to control wheel rotation and steering rotation independently to create 2 DOF planar motions with non free rolling mechanisms. To achieve the omnidirectional motion of the ACRO, precise coordination between the two motors are required to avoid confliction of motions, because at least four motors are needed to design a robotic platform moving the planar surface with 3 DOF. The design of ACROBAT is possible to reduce the number of sensor, computational cost and kinematic redundancy. First, we obtain the kinematic model of the ACROBAT. And perform experiments to check the performance of the ACROBAT. Finally, we show mobile robots consisted of the ACROBAT and experimental results of robots.

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Vehicles with active-caster wheels which are a kind of omnidirectional mechanism using normal pneumatic tires can move arbitrary directions immediately and can move freely from noise and vibrations. The control of vehicles with active casters, however, is not enough studied. This study aims to establish a control method of personal vehicles with active casters with respect to high safety and attractions of amusement park, using independent drive and steering of active caster vehicles and dynamic model of vehicle. This paper formulates a model of vehicles. Movements of usual nonholonomic vehicles can be imitated by using an omnidirectional vehicle with active caster wheels.

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The surfaces of volcanoes are covered with loose soil and gravel. Because of the weakness of the ground, the wheels of mobile robots can slip and get stuck. To avoid this problem and enhance the traveling performance, we developed a star-shaped wheel. In this paper, the star-shaped wheel is described in detail and its traveling performance is evaluated. To verify the effectiveness of the star-shaped wheel, we carried out slope-climbing test using a two-wheeled robot equipped with lugged/star-shaped wheels and compared their traveling performances. The experimental results confirmed that the star-shaped wheel has a higher traveling performance than the lugged wheel in gravel field.

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The long and thin snake-like robots have became popular for searching narrow spaces, such as debris of the collapsed buildings under the impact of large-scale disasters. Multi-link serpenoid robot (MLSR) has very high performance on continued irregular terrain. But, the robot stuck on discontinuity terrain easily. This paper describes multi-link serpenoid robot which has torus crawler. We develop prototype MLSR and experiment. As a result, the robot moved in torus crawler.

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We research the method of route setting by environment information from the internet map read by human for outdoor autonomous mobile robot. In many cases, to make a robot perform autonomous movement, the data of the course is needed to be collected at fieldworks in advance. Thereby, the range which a robot can move autonomously was limited by collected data at fieldworks. Therefore, in the future, we will can set from the internet map information the route for the robot without prior fieldwork. In this paper, we suggest research strategies.

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This paper presents the development of a new step-climbing mechanism for heavy load carrier. According to the measurement method presented, experimental results are given as the values of resistant force and possible power against 10mm step. The basic design of the proposed mechanism is illustrated, and its prototype is manufactured. Measured impact acceleration using the prototype, it was to be verified the accuracy of the mechanism CAE analysis. In addition, using the mechanism CAE analysis, we revealed the relationship between the angle and link length and the performance. The results from several experiments demonstrate that this prototype is able to drive over the target step 10mm effectively. It is, therefore, shown that the proposed mechanism is effective for driving over a step.

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Volcano observation rover needs to be able to explore and observation at the place which man cannot come into for a long period of time. Therefore, the Volcano observation rover must be carried out in the independent energy supply. Study of Volcano observation rover, observation of the volcano have been made in the world. However, there is no robot has been active robot is a long period of time to replenish energy at independence. In this research, We propose a power system that can be long-term observation. In order to supply electric source and wind generation by itself, the rover carried the solar panel. The power system is equipped with four modes. By selectively using these modes of power availability, allowing the longterm observation. It can carry out experiment for three consecutive days. In the developed system, perform the experiment.

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A two-wheeled inverted pendulum (WIP) inclines to keep balance in acceleration and deceleration. The purpose of this study is to improve the inclination by a movable center of gravity system (MCGS) when a WIP changes in the opposite direction movement. First, we built models of the WIP with MCGS system and WIP without MCGS system. Next, we designed the integral-type optimal servo system. According to results of drive experiment, the inclination angle and inclination angular velocity of WIP with MCGS lower then ones of WIP without MCGS. In conclusion, the MCGS shows that it is effective in an improvement of the inclination of WIP.

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