This paper describes a wristband-type tactile interface as a user interface for industrial robot remote monitoring systems. When operating a remote monitoring system, information delivery from a local site to an operator at a remote site is important. Visual and auditory information is often used. However, perception of the information might be limited if different types of information, are delivered at the same time. To solve this problem, we propose an interface that uses an illusion phenomenon called the phantom sensation. We present a preliminary experiment of the phantom sensation for the design of a wristband-type tactile interface.

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This study analyzes the recognition process of examining the texture of fine particles through tactile sensing using human fingers and aims at establishing the structure of texture recognition. Characteristic values of the tactile sensing are studied in order to investigate a relationship between tactile sensing and its verbal response. In this study, the SD method (Semantic Differential method) is used to execute the language estimation (the evaluation value) of fine particles. In this paper, the recognition of tactile sensing in mid teens is shown by the relationship between particle size of fine particles and the evaluation value.

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A multifunctional MEMS sensor for measurement of proximity and touch of an object has been fabricated and characterized. The DC resistance changes linearly to indentation distance of the object. On the other hand, the AC (> 500 kHz) impedance increases with increase of distance between the sensor surface and the object because of decrease of light intensity reflected on the object surface. An error of proximity measurement induced by environmental temperature and illuminance has been characterized. The error was estimated at 1 mm for 1℃ temperature change and at 2 mm for 500 lx illuminance change, respectively, and they are enough low in stable environment. Moreover, the AC impedance was different between grounding and floating the proximate object because of difference of distribution of electricstatic field between electrodes, so that it is suggested that proximity can be measured as the impedance change by light as well as electrostatic field.

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Flexible contact sheet sensor for three-axis load measurement was developed. The developed sensor is composed of elastic body and load measurement layer. The elastic body is made from silicon rubber. Load measurement layer is composed of upper electrode, electric conductive material and lower electrode. Value of resistance of electric conductive material is changed by load. Therefore, voltage between upper electrode and lower electrode was changed. Normal load and shearing load can be detected by measuring voltage between upper electrode and lower electrode.

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This paper presents automatic take-off and landing control of powered paraglider (PPG). In our previous paper, two stable controllers for altitude and direction were designed and worked well in flight experiments. These controllers are utilized for automatic landing control without any modification. Automatic landing control is carried out by setting gradually lower altitudes (as target altitudes) along a target landing line. Automatic take-off control is based on feed-forward control that reflects the manual take-off operation by a skilled person. The experimental results demonstrate the viability of the automatic take-off and landing control designed in this paper.

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We aim to construct the quad-rotor with variable arms and develop a simulator for stability analysis in order to find the optimal arm degree of the quad-rotor. The proposed simulation is based on the modified dynamics of quad-rotor, especially, variable arms, and it can visualize the behavior of quad-rotor under various arm degrees. Through the observation of proposed simulation, it is confirmed that the behavior of quad-rotor with variable arms is different from the conventional quad-rotor, that is, fixed arms.

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The background search using the aircraft in the disaster site in an indoor environment is impossible, and a method of controlling in a stable aircraft will not hit the wall, the self without using external information such as GPS it was because the method of estimating the position is missing. In this study, we solve the above problem by using a new image processing method and position control by "twist" operation.

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Information from the sky is important for rescue activity in large-scale disaster or areas at high risk from natural hazards. Observation systems based on an airplane or a balloon have been studied as information gathering systems from the sky. A balloon-based observation system needs helium gas and relatively long preparation time. An airplane-based observation system can be prepared in short time and its mobility is good. However, a long time flight is difficult because of the limited amount of fuel. This paper proposes a kite-based observation system that complements the activities of the balloon and airplane observation systems by short preparation time and long-term flight. This research aims at construction of the autonomous flight information gathering system using a tethered flying unit that consists of the kite and the ground tether line control unit with a winding machine. This paper reports the development of the kite type tethered flying robot and a fuzzy based autonomous flying control system.

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With the risk to be the non-leveling of ground environment where there is fear of an aftershock and the debris collapse, and to bring second damage to help worker. It is thought that an unmanned system playing an active part as a human substitute in such an environment is necessary. As for the robot moving such non-leveling of ground environment, a variety of forms such as a wheel type, a crawler type, a leg type are thought about, but it is particularly important to put a robot of the one in the minimum size and mass when it is aimed for intelligence. However, with downsizing, the ability to travel across the debris generally decreases. Therefore if I pay my attention to obstacles less than a wheel diameter, andit is passive in this, and there is a wheel climbed over, I can expect improvement of the movement efficiency, and it is thought that it is useful for course choice. It is passive and develops the passive transformation wheel that an obstacle is got over assuming two small rovers to use for the in telligence in the disaster spot in this study.

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A lot of mobile robots running the non-leveling of ground exist. However, it is difficult to evaluate the running performance of these mobile robots quantitatively. Because the reason brings a field experiment to the mainstream, this is because it is difficult to know the reply to topography performance of the body. In this paper, the experimental device added an irregularity to on a treadmill to evaluate the non-leveling of ground running performance of the mobile robot is introduced. As a result, It was succeeded in extracting reply to topography performance such as a wheel type, a crawler type mechanism.

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Methods to realize volcano observation safely include the land observation with the terrain mobile robot. The principal objective is often put in running the whole course of the irregularity ground, and the terrain mobile robot which has been developed cannot support mud of the leveling of ground and the ground by the bad weather enough until now. Therefore I developed with the wheel which can change into the mode of three such as the breadth wheel with a shape at the time of rag wheel, weak ground at the time of circular wheel, irregularity ground at the age of the leveling of ground. Volume of deformation of wheel diameter and the width doubled 1.5 times, 2.8 each and showed that it was effective.

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As one of the guiding methods, platoon driving system using Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) has been proposed to manage many vehicles driving at the same time. In this study, we design longitudinal and lateral control systems to realize the platoon driving system indoors. At first, we construct a longitudinal control system using ACC with Modeling Error Compensator (MEC) in order to satisfy string stability. Also, a lateral control system is designed based on target point following algorithm using way points. By this control method, the robust ACC system along wheel track of preceding vehicle is achieved. Finally, the accuracy of platoon driving is confirmed through experiments.

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The paper describes the development of a variable-wing for an aerial-aquatic mobile robot. When a flood occurred, it is difficult and dangerous for human to approach the house which collapsed in flood water or the car which is carried away by flood water. In order to solve the problem, first the robot approaches the place from air, then move through the water to approach it. This time, we propose a variable-wing with a lock mechanism and a passive double-hinged flapping mechanism to perform on the air and under the water maneuver. Through experimentation, we have checked the variable-wing with the lock mechanism and the passive double-hinged flapping mechanism.

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There are approximately 700,000 bridges which are bridges of 2[m] over a bridge length in Japan. At intervals of once every five years, it is necessary to inspect the bridge. That is, it is necessary to inspect the bridge 140,000 per year. In addition, reduction of experts bridge a decrease in tax revenues due to declining birthrate and aging population is a problem. Therefore in this research reports on flight experiments to build a control algorithm to fly by avoiding contact with the structure semi-autonomously implement the sensor to a multi-copter for the purpose of detection of cracks in the space under the bridge.

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This paper describes the development of a quadrotor with manipulation function. Up to the present time, wheeled and crawler type robot has been mainly utilized to approach into collapsed buildings. However, these type of robots are difficult to correspond to the unstructured terrain or climb up the ladder. In order to solve these problems, the flying robot which has manipulation function, has been proposed. In this report, a control method and mechanism to attach on the wall for quadrotor has been suggested and effectiveness of this approach has been experimentally verified.

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We have developed a new mechanism able to move the center of gravity. Mechanism is equipped with a weight table in the yaw direction and the pitch direction in order to move the center of gravity. We developed a flying robot equipped with the mechanism. Result of the operation check of the flying robot, it was confirmed that it is possible to rotate 360° robot by using a mechanism, the attitude control can be. Thus, the development of a robot that can be moved freely three-dimensional space by using a mechanism is possible.

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Recently, welfare personal vehicles for seniors have been focused on. The piggyback style vehicle, STAVi, was proposed by authors. In case of driving in indoor narrow corridors, since passers dashe out from the doors or the corners occasionally, the driver should be careful about driving. However, it is difficult to avoid obstacles quickly for senior drivers. If avoidance intention of driver can be detected exactly from the motion, safe steering avoidance assistance will be realized. In this paper, a novel steering avoidance assistance method which detects intention from weight shift motion of driver is proposed. The driver controls the STAVi using the center of gravity changes due to weight shift as well as the joystick driving operation. The comfortable maneuverability is achieved using Modeling Error Compensator(MEC), and the avoidance intention can be decided practically using threshold of the weight shift.

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In this paper, we studied the gain tuning of pseudo-continuous exponential stabilization control (PCESC) for a nonholonomic system. The control approach was based on invariant manifold using state vector of chained form which was one of canonical forms for nonholonomic system. The chained form was derived through the state variable transform from kinematics. The state vector in chained form converged to the desired value according to the PCESC. Unfortunately, the state vector of kinematics converged to the desired value with some switching points. The number of these switching points changed due to gains of the PCESC. We verified the relationship between the number of switching points and gains by some numerical simulations of the mobile robot with two independent driving wheels. Consequently, we found that the number of switching points was dependent on the overshoot on state vector of kinematics.

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There are many pipes such as a water pipe and a gas pipe in a chemical plant, a factory and house. It is possible to prevent accident ensure safety by these investigating. However, many pipes are very narrow and it is difficult for people to inspect directly. In this study, a cylindrical crawler robot based on Amoeba locomotion, which has a simple mechanism and does not need large space to move, is proposed. When moving the inside of a pipe, this crawler robot uses the elastic force of a crawler belt to hold the robot in pipe. Additionally the robot uses elastic deformation of a crawler belt to pass of a step between pipes with different diameters. Therefore, the robot can move the pipes of different diameters and the vertical pipe by using only on actuator. This paper reports the structure, drive mechanism, design, and prototype evaluation.

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The odometric dead reckoning is a fundamental method to estimate the self-location of a mobile robot. However, an environment to which the method is able to be applied is only a flat surface. Therefore, we plan to extend the environment to a curved surface by taking into account a spatial relation between the surface and robot's wheels. Our extension requires information of wheel-terrain contact points in addition to rotation angles of wheels. In previous work, we have proposed two types of contact point detectors, an image sensor type and a mechanical probe type. However, precisions of the image sensor type and a mechanical probe type are influenced by environmental light and elastic deformation of the probe tip, respectively. In this paper, we propose a new detector that finds a wheel-terrain contact point by scanning the terrain with an infrared proximity sensor.

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This paper proposes a nano-scale helicopter with an onboard camera and its control system. The total weight of the helicopter with the camera is 48 g, and the helicopter belongs to a class of nano-scale aerial vehicles. The camera looks downward, and it captures an image of the ground at each time step. The captured image data are transferred via a receiver to a computer at a ground station. The computer processes the image data, and it generates a control signal. The control signal is then supplied through a transmitter to the helicopter. Five-minutes hovering flight can be achieved by a markerless visual servo technique with phase correlation.

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Underactuated flying object of this research imitates a helicopter. The helicopter is applied in a large field from ability of flight such as vertical ascent, vertical descent and hovering. Especially manned helicopter is used for rescue, emergency activity and fire fighting at the time of disaster, and unmanned helicopter is precious sources of information in the danger spot where people cannot approach. However the helicopter is complex and a nonlinear system. Moreover, change of the center of gravity by collapse of cargo piles is considered as a cause of the plane crash in recent years. In this research, we examine the relation of the frequency response for pitch angle and the center of gravity of underactuated flying object in order to consider the stabilization method of the orientation.

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In this paper, a model of lifting force generation system in order to perform the lifting control 4-axis aircraft is proposed. In the prior study, since it is assumed that lifting force of 4-axis aircraft can be generated by algebraic are addition and subtraction of motor duty ratio value, and time delay and coupling of dynamics are ignored. However, the ignored elements may deteriorate the performance of the actual system. In this study, I propose a model of lifting force generation system that identified on the basis of experimental data obtained by the lifting force measurement device. Finally, we perform lifting force tracking experiment by using this model.

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In this study, flying cargo system based on multi copter is presented. This system is designed for transporting at irregular ground. Specialized "Touch/auto Operation" method for flying cargo system were tested. This is intuitive operation method by which any one can operate flying cargo system. Flying cargo can do transportation in horizontal and vertical directions without topographically effect.

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The increasing of the people who need the care is serious problem in an aging society. This problem is significant for the transferring. To solve this problem, we developed the wheelchair which can move omni-direction. This wheelchair supposed to use outside in real situation. The operating in real situation needs to overcome the bump. The wheelchair realized the omni-directional movement with three pair of wheels without using an omniwheel. The wheelchair we developed realized the simply controlled in a complicated narrow space as few input as. This omni-directional function will be installed to the transfer equipment for patient.

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In the kinematic control of mobile robot, the accurate velocity control of each wheel is crucial. In this paper, an active disturbance rejection control is applied to a MY-Wheel-II assembly which is an omnidirectional wheel mechanism. The proposed control method is inherent robust and very easy to be tuned, while requiring little model information about the wheel mechanism. The internal dynamics and external disturbances can be estimated by the extended state observer and compensated in the control signal in real time. Experimental results show that the ADRC achieves definitely much better performance than classical proportional-integral control.

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A lot of researches on inverted pendulum cart are conducted in recent years. And it attracts as a personal vehicle that realizes energy saving for many practical applications. However, because 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, an inverted pendulum cart with a sliding mechanism for posture control that could be ridden by anyone has been developed. First, algorithm to estimate the lean angle, that is calculated based on center of gravity of the cart, using the full-order state observer is proposed in this research. Secondly, algorithm to keep the posture of cart perpendicular against the change of the center of gravity is proposed. Then, desired position of slider is calculated based on the estimated lean angle. Finally, the effectiveness of algorithm is confirmed through a simulation.

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In recent years, Japan has fallen into the shortage of worker, so people are expecting the robot to work instead. However, service robots are not widespread in society. In order to improve this problem, we developed wheel type mobile robot base, as small and medium enterprises be able to develop. In this paper, we show that the result of the marketing survey for the guidance robot and designed robot, and the results of the joint research standard circuit board for the base robot, and the results of the joint research applications using the robot base.

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This study aims to performance evaluation of ducted-fan multi copter. Ducted-fan multi copter has ducted-fans instead of non-covered rotors. Ducted-fan's rotor is protected by duct, so it can reduce risk of collision between human body and multi copter. We developed multi ducted-fan helicopter which has 4 ducted-fans. We call it Quad Ducted-fan Helicopter (QDH). In this paper, we developed new QDH that modified old QDH developed in last year. New QDH is reduced weight and extended body size. From flight experiments result about new and old QDH, difference of these flight characteristic was found. Flight performance of new QDH is better than old one. Furthermore we found that new QDH has almost same performance as standard 4 rotors helicopter.

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This paper presents a fail-safe system which is divided to two blocks of "diagnose" and "controller redesign" for 6-rotor helicopter(MS-06). The diagnose block is using model-based method to estimate the output of propulsion and used the algorithm to determine the failure of propulsion parts. And controller redesign block solve the control allocation problem with Pseudo-Inverse Solution to keep the 6-rotor helicopter flying under the propulsion parts failure.

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In recent years, UAVs play various roles through the progress of the flight control technologies. Electric powered helicopters suffer from the disadvantage of short duration of flight. To solve this problem, Wired-powered Multi-rotor Helicopter is developed. But the higher Multi-rotor Helicopter fly, the higher cable hang. Because of this, it is obvious that Multi-rotor Helicopter is affected by cable. In this paper, first, to compare wired with wireless we run control simulation by PID control. Second, we analysis cable's mode. Cosidering it, we run control simulation by optimum control to verify whether vibration of Multi-rotor Helicopter is smaller. Finally, the conclusion and the future works is described.

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In recent years, Micro Air Vehicle(MAV) is performed actively all over the world. Because MAV in particular has characteristics such as small and light, high mobility, it is used in various fields. As the use by private enterprise and the industry of the robot such as these spreads out, it becomes more important to improve safety and reliability. The outbreak of the trouble in the flight robots such as helicopters causes a crash in many cases. In this paper, we suggest the development of the parachute device for the purpose of the safe improvement in the multi-rotor helicopter. We explain Parachute device(parachute and parachute ejecting device) which was introduced this time and falling test using this device. And in this paper, we explain develop plan of the parachute system and fault detection system of the robot.

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Omni-directional mechanisms have various problems. For example, too large and heavy, difficult to absorb an external shock and to run on uneven terrain. thus, we have developed a light and small omni-directional robot "Eggbeater". Eggbeater has three globular metal spring wheels. The wheel can be applied to uneven terrain of outdoor environments. However, There is a limit to the running of the rough terrain of the Eggbeater. In this paper, we have developed a new Eggbeater with improved running ability in rough terrain. Eggbeater2 has four globular metal spring wheels composed 48 SMA (Shape Memory Alloy) wires.

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Omni-directional mechanisms have various problems. For example, it is too large and heavy, difficult to absorb an external shock and to run on uneven terrain. Thus, we have developed a omni-directional robot which light and small omni-directional robot "Eggbeater-FM". Eggbeater-FM has four mecanum wheels composed of 60 fins made of PP(polypropylene). This wheel is flexible and is able to absorb an external shock. Eggbeater-FM climbed over steps by torsion main body. This paper shows Eggbeater-FM mechanical design and control system.

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Recently, the autonomous operating system is required in the mining industry because of the severe environment and decrease of operators. We develop the above-mentioned system for embarking of ore by Wheel-Loader. In this report, we establish a Motion Planning Algorithms for Wheel-Loaders through the comparison of four different planning methods. One of them is Continuous-Curvature Paths, the others are Genetic Algorithm and two different algorithms based Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees.

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This paper presents a robot capable of inspecting pipes with different diameters. The robot consists of a rotating part, a connecting part and a holding part. The rotating part and the holding part are removable and have slide arms. A fiber grating (FG) system that can cognize pipe environment is installed on the robot. The FG system consists of a laser, a FG, and a CCD camera. The laser makes a grid through the FG, and they are taken by the CCD. FG system measure the coordinates according to the principle of triangulation. The robot with two and more units can move in L-type and T-type pipes. Through experiments, the effectiveness of the robot was verified.

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The aim of this study is to shorten the time required controller design for multi-rotor helicopter and make a stable control system for changing dynamics of it. Our research group has been studying the autonomous control of multi-rotor helicopter, and it was successfully demonstrated in outdoor experiments. The control system design is based on optimal control theory using gray-box modeling, and it requires much time and effort of modeling and control. In addition, changing helicopter's dynamics leads to deterioration of the control performance. In this study, we applied adaptive control method to solve the problems that have been presented. It was found from experimental result that adaptive control is effective for altitude control of multi-rotor helicopter. Moreover, it made a success to shorten the time required controller design. In this paper, we present its adaptive control system, simulation results, and experimental results.

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This paper proposes control methods and design techniques of a non-planar hexarotor helicopter which is capable of decoupling attitude motion from translational motion dividing the six rotors into three pairs and placing on three orthogonal planes. Variable pitch rotors are employed so that force in both negative and positive directions is generated. By enclosing all mechanical parts within a frame, it is possible to protect it from collisions and y in narrow space. Unless it is needed to hover, it can move to the destination using rolling motion, thereby reducing energy consumption. We performed mechanical design of the proposed helicopter in detail. Its hardware specification and CAD drawings are described. Static and dynamic models are derived from geometrical relations and simple aerodynamic models. We also designed control systems using modern control theory and backstepping. We simulated the designed system to examine whether the performance meets requirements.

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In this study, we aim to establish the optimal mechanical design method for fixed-pitch coaxial-rotor helicopter. The fixed-pitch coaxial-rotor helicopter has several advantages. However, fixed-pitch coaxial-rotor helicopter has a disadvantage in forward flight named pitch-up phenomenon. The pitch-up phenomenon causes a little cruise speed of the helicopter. To overcome such a problem, we propose optimal mechanical design of the fixed-pitch coaxial-rotor helicopter by using precise mathematical model of the helicopter and numerical optimization method. The mechanical parameters are examined to maximize the cruise speed of the helicopter. Mechanical parameter optimization based on derived mathematical model and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method is proposed. In the simulation, the position of the universal joint is optimized to maximize the cruise speed of the helicopter.

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Quadrotor are expected to use in disaster investigation or infrastructure inspection. There are complex structure and narrow spaces in these field. In flight on such an environment, there is a high risk of crash due to contact with an obstacle. Therefore, this paper proposes a quadrotor with a rotating spherical shell. The shell can be rotated freely independently of the quadrotor, so it can parry the impact of collision. We designed the prototype, and it was examined experimentally.

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A robot that can move in a wide area and can realize various motions is necessary to satisfy people's requirements. Therefore, a variety of robots have been developed, but a problem in efficiency remains. In order to solve this problem, a robotic driving base was proposed in our research. In this paper, we propose a mobile working robot using robotic driving base. The structure of the robotic driving base and the mobile working robot is explained.

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In this paper, we propose a teleoperation system supported by an autonomous mobile technique. The traveling direction of the robot is roughly determined by the operator, and that motion planning is executed to achieve a safe driving. In the motion planning phase, multiple trajectories that take into account the mobility of the robot are generated, and the most optimal trajectory is singled out through several evaluations. These evaluations consider a risk of collision, a smoothness of the trajectory, and a difference between traveling directions and terminal states of trajectories. The risk of collision is checked by using 2D navigation map obtained from the laser scanned data. By the above-mentioned technique, we construct a teleoperation system which attains safe driving and desired motion of the robot. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proved through the experiment in complex environments.

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Wheeled vehicles have low ability to climb stairs. We proposed a simple mechanism for geometrically complete trochoid as a novel omnidirectional translation mechanism. It has high ability not only to get over the difference in level, but also to climb a stairs stably with simple climbing craws. In this paper, a prototype model was constructed using the craw. The craw does not disturb smooth omnidirectional translation. We propose a novel driving method also to realize omnidirectional translation on narrow treads. By the combination of the climbing craw and the novel driving method, this mechanism can climb stably a stairs, step by step.

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This paper presents an attitude control for the running stability of a micro-electric car (MEC). The MEC with a short wheelbase is lightweight. Therefore, the riding-comfort and driving performance of the car can be worse than a conventional car. To solve the problems, an attitude stabilization control method based on driving torque is used. The control method improves the longitudinal vibration of the car. Through several riding experiments using a developed robot car, the effectiveness of the control method is confirmed.

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This paper presents the development of a flying robot which can carry payload up to 4.1 kg. This flying robot consists of four rotors and a body system. Its weight is 7080[g]. The maximum thrust is 14480[g]. Inertial measurement unit sensor (IMU) is used to acquire the posture information of the robot. Four incremental encoders are also used for rotor position sensing. Also, the speed of the DC motors is controlled by a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signal that is derived from the information of the IMU sensor and the encoders. Through hovering flight experiments, the effectiveness of the mechanism and the control system was verified.

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An unmanned flying boat is an aircraft which is designed to take off and land on water. The unmanned flying boat is useful as emergency aerial observation methods. In previous researches, we developed the small flying boat controlled by the human operator for observations. However, it is difficult for beginner to operate the flying boat. In this paper, we consider automatic control and autonomous flight for the flying boat. By this study, everyone can control this flying boat easily. Besides, we add GPS to the flying boat in order to realize the location of the flying boat regardless autonomous flight.

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We propose 3D measurement system for the quad rotor helicopter. In this system, 3D measurement of the structure in the surrounding becomes possible by installing the laser range finder (LRF) on the airframe, and controlling maneuver automatically. Best maneuver and the control techniques are examined. The control was difficult though it had made to three dimensions last time by the maneuver that used the precession movement. LRF is set up by turning sideways to control easily this time.

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This study describes online system identification of an altitude model and adaptive control of a multi-rotor helicopter. The identification approach is a nonlinear filtering problem for a augmented state space. As a system identification algorithm, EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) and UKF (Unscented Kalman Filter) are compared. Furthermore, Self-Tuning PID Controller is designed. Once PID gains are tuned, Self-Tuning PID Controller tunes these gains automatically in response to the system variation. This tuning algorithm is based on a characteristic equation of the feedback system. A simulation and offline data processing are done to verify the efficiency of the algorithm.

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We introduce daily life-support robot ASAHI. This describes development of the 2013-version of ASAHI, which is easily operated by the user mainly using verbal communications and gesture. ASAHI2013 is composed of a mobile base sub-system, a manipulator sub-system, a robot avatar sub-system, dialog sub-system and vision sub-system. ASAHI2013 is able to execute human-following using a laser range finder, recognize pointing gesture using an RGB-D sensor and fetch and carry the object to the user using a 6-DOF manipulator.

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We are developing a robot that guides a user in a building to the destination room holding by the user's hand. We think that a robot and a human can adjust one's moving direction or position by communication with hands. However, conventional robot arms have two problems. First, the human is constrained within a range of the robot arm's movable scope and not easy to walk. Second, the robot arm is not safe enough when it collides with other people. Therefore, we propose a robot that has an expandable hand. It can follow the human flexibly by stretching/shrinking the hand held by the human. The hand is made with soft string, which ensures the safety. In this paper, we report the basic concept as well as the hardware configuration of the robot.

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