The opening and closing operations of microtube's cap in clinical laboratory and biological experiment have the potential risks of contamination due to scattering and contact of specimens, and not only the accuracy of inspections and experiments, but also the safety of workers and experimenters. We have already developed a microtube capper for automated robot system of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. There are needs for such microtube cappers not only in automation systems, but also in manual operations in biological safety cabinets. In this study, we propose a manually operated compact microtube capper under condition of opening and closing the cap without touching the microtube after microtube setting to the microtube capper. Demonstrations showed that experimenters or operators can safely and smoothly perform pipetting operations by tactile switch operations without touching the microtube while looking directly at the sample in the microtube.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has revealed that only a small number of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests can be performed per day in Japan. This research aims to develop a flexible; and continuous testing system capable of detecting new mutant strains and unknown viruses that may emerge in the future. We analyzed the existing problems related to the information system overseeing PCR testing and prototyped an inspection information system. In this study, we integrated the inspection information system into the inspection process and conducted a comprehensive evaluation. The results indicate that the system is effective in reducing manual work. Further research is needed to refine the inspection information system and make it more user-friendly, based on the feedback and evaluation results.

AR markers are utilized as a support tool for robotic object handling to easily estimate position and posture of objects with a monocular camera. However, the use of small-sized AR markers in a conventional camera system with fixed parameters causes a trade-off issue between the recognition accuracy and range. In this work, a precise object-handling system is developed using small-sized, high-resolution AR markers with a novel dynamic camera parameter control to realize both accuracy and wide-range of the recognition. The proposed method iterates calculation of camera parameters based on the measured depth distance of the AR marker. This camera control system achieves a recognition error of less than ± 1% over the entire depth distance of 1.0 m. Furthermore, the manipulation accuracy and recognition speed of the developed object-handling system were investigated with a two-step recognition strategy. During 220 trials of an object picking in total, a task success rate of 100 % and an average recognition time of within 0.5 seconds were achieved.

Depending on the object, grasping and manipulation by a robot may be susceptible to disturbances consisting of complex elements related to the object and may not be able to grasp the object in a stable manner. In addition, If the object to be gripped is long or flexible, it is difficult to finely adjust the grip using the existing single arm which is the basis of industrial robots, and there is a risk that the object may not be gripped or may be damaged. Under the long-term goal of making it possible to stably grasp objects, even for difficult objects, we try to find a new approach and grasping method using a dual-arm robot as one of these methods. In this study, we attempt to develop a system that can grasp an object with both arms using a cooperative dual-arm robot and a depth camera.

Marine pollution caused by the discharge of waste has become a global issue. In this study, a system to facilitate the collection of drifted debris on the coast by enabling easy understanding of its current state was developed. The proposed system could quantify of drifted debris by multiple user, using garbage detection AI through uploading images from mobile devices such as smartphones to cloud storage. The developed system was verified by 40 users during an actual coastal, and it made it possible to collect 126 debris images and detect 506 debris items.

This presentation describes a teaching material that simplifies the development of robot control systems for students majoring in mechanical engineering. The developed teaching material is a procedure to develop a control system by utilizing modularized robot components such as Arduino, Grove, and ROS, and templates of codes. The effectiveness of the teaching material is verified through the development of an environmental measurement unit.

Construction of overhead power transmission towers places a heavy burden on workers because they must carry heavy loads to the top of the towers．In addition，the number of workers required is numerous，which is an obstacle to the work style reform．In this research, we apply the technology of the space elevator climber and develop a transport robot that can transport heavy loads along ropes to the top of overhead power transmission towers．The target weight to be transported is 100 kg．If successfully developed，the robot will reduce the number of safety control workers and improve the work style and safety on site．

Currently, safety monitoring of workers at heights in overhead power transmission tower construction is performed visually by workers below the towers, but this is not sufficient. Therefore, we aim to develop a robot that can ascend and descend along the tower to monitor the safety of workers at height. The robot is equipped with a camera and speakers to monitor the safety of workers at heights, and can be easily controlled using a tablet. The tablet displays images captured by the camera. We also aim to develop a system that uses image recognition to prevent workers from accidentally entering dangerous areas.

Due to the decrease in the number of painters, there is a demand for automation of the painting of contact line support iron poles. In this study, we report on a bilaterally controlled remote-controlled brush painting manipulator that can paint outdoor steel poles with irregular shapes where spray painting cannot be used.

Many Bridges in Japan will be aging and need to be inspected regularly, so more efficient and safe inspection of Bridges is an important task. Robots for bridge inspection have been extensively studied, some of which use permanent magnets as wheels for robot movement. However, permanent magnets have the risk of damaging the bridge. In order to enable the robot to walk on Bridges of different materials, the combination of propeller and EPM (Electro Permanent Magnet) wheel is used in this study. In concrete and other parts, the robot is driven by propeller. When the bridge material is detected as magnet, the EPM wheel is turned ON and the propeller is shut down for inspection.

Electrical cables in housing and building often installed on electrical conduit. And process of passing cable in conduit is commonly done with push and pull method by human power. This process is often burden for worker, therefore the way to reduce workload is desired. In this research, electromechanical cable pushing and pulling machine using liner stage driven by ball-screw and twin parallel link clamp mechanism was built. And with experiments, method that is well fitted for situation was investigated. From the results, “push with man and pull with machine”system was devised.

This study presents a design example for a self-constructable modularized rail structure aiming for robotic automation of bridge maintenance tasks. The design is based on quantitative analysis of the necessary functions and constraints for operation at actual scale. The proposed mechanism for sliding and rotating rails at 1/4 scale demonstrates the feasibility of the design. The rail module is equipped with V-guide rails and a pin rack, providing two functions: the movement of the rail and the provision of an environment for the maintenance robot to move. As a full-scale system requires a large amount of torque, the scale model was designed to incorporate a mechanism capable of generating a similarly large amount of torque. To achieve these movements, an electric cylinder and a wire-driven joint rotation mechanism are installed in the scale model.

This paper describes autonomous driving of dump truck using a retrofit control device and its field application at a quarry site. The retrofit control system is installed to an unconventional dump truck so that the authors considered the installation position of the equipment on the chassis. In addition, the authors newly developed a measurement device of steering angle and bed angle. Experimental results show that the dump truck can autonomously drive in the actual quarry site including winded narrow path and slopes.

Japan has been actively working to improve the earthquake resistance of homes and buildings after multiple major earthquakes have occurred in the past, resulting in the collapse of buildings. While research has been conducted on inspection robots for spaces such as under the first floor of houses and under the ceilings of buildings, inspection robots have not been developed for narrow spaces such as second-floor attics because of the limited range of human observation. This research aims to develop an automatic percussion mechanism with an acoustic analysis function that can be equipped with a residential inspection robot for use in narrow spaces.

We investigated the applications of a service robot equipped with a remote communication system at construction sites with different construction periods at a construction site and conducted applications experiments. For the purpose of construction management, we verified the functions to realize applications such as patrol, monitoring of the site, and communication with workers at the site, and confirmed the effectiveness of the system. Specifically, we verified the functions of the robot, such as the robot's running performance required for the patrol, operation performance from a remote location, camera performance required for the monitoring, and voice input/output required for the communication, and also clarified the problems.

In facility construction of a building, illuminance measurement is required to verify that the illuminance condition satisfies JIS regulations before its completion. In order to perform illuminance measurement accurately, measurements are conducted at night, causing long working hours at night. In this paper, we propose an autonomous illuminance measurement robot system consisting of multiple robots. The experiments show that the measurement errors of illuminance compared to the human measurements is 1.36% and the measurement time is reduced about 12%.

The guide frame for tunnel inspection consists of multiple variable shape trusses (VGT), and the shape of the frame can be changed to avoid obstacles inside the tunnel. Since this guide frame holds the structure, it cannot easily change its shape and is controlled by the extension of the actuator. On the other hand, for the purpose of manipulating the shape of the frame easily, we investigated a deployment method using a force control technique. The manual external force on the guide frame was detected by a force sensor, and the axial force acting on each frame was analyzed by the finite element method. By appropriately controlling the extension speed according to the axial force acting on the actuator, it is possible to smoothly change the shape of the guide frame. In this report, the force control and analysis of shape change, feedback control, and operation experiments.

Currently, with the increasing number of aging social infrastructure structures, manual inspection is required. However, these inspections have various problems such as cost, safety, and required time. Therefore, in previous research, a wall-climbing robot using UVG was developed, and unmanned inspection work was performed. The UVG is a vacuum adhesive gripper composed of a film and a powder. However, it has a problem that the film breaks when it tries to adhere to a sharp object, resulting in malfunction. In this study, we aim to develop a vacuum adhesive gripper without a film using micro-magnetic powder.

In this paper, we focused on the possibility that there is an optimal control method for each subtask in excavation operations, and we experimentally investigated the optimal control method for each subtask with respect to the constructed control methods. First, three control methods were implemented for comparison: an angle-velocity method using a joystick, a position-velocity method using a tactile interface, and a position-position method using a haptic interface. Next, an experiment was conducted to compare these methods for each task, and to compare and evaluate the optimal method of operation. The results showed that the position-position method was superior for sagittal plane work, while the angle-velocity and position-velocity methods were superior for swinging work.

Traditional tile inspection robots perform wall adhesion and tapping inspection with separate driving sources, resulting in high load due to system complexity. In this study, we developed a wall climbing robot capable of wall adhesion and tile floating detection using the same vibration source. In real machine experiments, the robot performed tile floating inspection by deep learning while adhered to the tile. As a result, it achieved a detection accuracy of 82%.

For social implementation of indoor robots, movement in narrow passages is an issue. Therefore, an omnidirectional mobile robot is expected. For a practical robot, we want the top surface of the robot to be a space where functions are installed. The drive structure should take into account the usage rate of movement motions. Passages and rooms are often arranged at right angles, and are configured with 4 omni wheels and 4 actuators arranged in 90 degree directions. However, this results in 1 degree of freedom redundancy for 3 spatial degrees of freedom. In addition, the weight and size of the robot will increase, which will reduce competitiveness. Based on the above, this paper proposes a driving structure consisting of 4 omni wheels and 3 actuators. We designed and manufactured the robot and confirmed its movement by running the actual machine.

This paper reports the social implementation activities of the articulated wheeled in-pipe inspection robot “AIRo-7.1” to the suwer pipes. The proposed robot is waterproof and dustproof, and its adaptive inner diameter is 3 to 4 in. The torque and angle of the middle joint can be controlled by the motor current and potentiometer, respectively. The inspection target is focused to sewage force main pipes, and the actual equipment developed and the results in field tests are described.

This paper proposes a new emergency escape-ready 3 in in-pipe inspection robot “Xbot 1”, which combines a wire driven mechanism with parallel elastic elements in a link mechanism and a backdrivable rack-and-pinion mechanism. To examine the validity of the mechanism, a prototype of the proposed robot was fabricated and tested on an actual force main. Despite the harsh and slimy environment with sewage, the robot successfully traveled 7.5 m, including one bend with connecting part.

There is a growing demand for in-pipe inspection robots for infrastructure maintenance. In actual pipelines, there is a pipe that two elbow pipes are continuously connected and bent three-dimensionally, called ”out-of-plane double elbow”. It is geometrically difficult for multi-link articulated wheeled robots to travel inside such a structure. In this manuscript, a two-link V-shaped in-pipe inspection robot ”AIRo-6.1” with a torque controllable active joint and two head and tail active spherical wheels is proposed. Travel performances in the out-of-plane double elbow was examined by experiments with four different starting postures. From the results, AIRo-6.1 successfully passed through those pipes.

In this paper, we have conducted research on the standardization and scalability of the USV system and the realization of independent movement of the USV using GPS by installing ROS on the USV for the Blue Carbon survey, up to the acquisition of standardized camera, operation and location information.

We are developing a ray-shaped robot by using SMA wires as actuators. To reproduce the swimming behavior of a ray by flapping their pectoral fins, we firstly examined the structure of the fins. A silicone-molded fin was fabricated by oppositely placing two SMA wires in the upper and lower sides, and the flapping actions were realized while alternately driving the SMA wires. Rippling motion was also reproduced by employing the SMA wires in the front, center, and back of the fin. Furthermore, the thickness of the fin was also examined to find the better swimming performance. The performance of the fin, including its propulsive ability, was evaluated through several experiments.

In recent years, biomimetic robotic fish has attracted attention to investigate underwater organisms and the environment, as it poses little threat to underwater lives. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a new type of fish robot inspired by eagle rays that swim efficiently using pectoral fins. We first observed the swimming movements of cow nose rays and extracted the characteristics of swimming by pectoral fins. Then, we developed a wire-driven flapping mechanism, covered with soft skin, mimicking the flexible structure of the pectoral fin of rays. In the experiment, we evaluated the performance in straight and circular swimming to examine if the robot has the potential to mimic ray-like swimming.

The development of drone technology has enabled unmanned exploration and investigation in a variety of environments. Among drones, Remotely Operated Vehicle (hereinafter called “ROV”) have a wide range of applications, such as underwater surveys, because they can be remotely operated for unmanned diving. However, ROVs specialized for industrial applications are often large, expensive, and considered difficult to operate. Therefore, the objective of this study is to build an inexpensive and compact ROV that operates by a microcomputer and to construct a control system that enables simple operation. To realize the objective, we constructed a system for controlling the ROV via gamepad input and attitude control by PID control.

An underwater robot, G-TURTLE（Glider-Type Underwater RoboT for Lake Environmental survey）, has been developed by authors. The task of this robot is sampling the mud on the bottom of lakes to survey the radioactivities originated from the Fukushima Dai-ich nuclear plant. This underwater robot uses a thruster system for vertical movement and mud sampling, and a glider system for horizontal movement. In this study, we develop a buoyancy controller, which is important for the glider type movement. In this paper, the basic characteristics of the buoyancy controller using PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene）bellows are discussed. The relationship between the deformation of the bellows and the water pressure is identified.

This paper describes about the hybrid simulation result of the debris capturing motion using Satellite Dynamics test platform for on-orbit service (SATDyn), which is being developed at JAXA. Based on the simplectic integration scheme, the hybrid simulation can be conducted without any oscillation due to the system delay. The preliminary evaluation experiment using the actual capturing device and the actual size of the debris has been conducted to evaluate the availability of this algorithm. The motion regarding to the capturing satellite center of gravity is well simulated and the reactive motion of the contact due to capturing is also simulated without any anomaly.

Some organizations plan to explore the Lunar or planetary surfaces using a small rover. However, the traveling performance of the rover could be worse due to loose soil on the ground. To solve this problem, this paper focuses on the rover using an extend and shrink locomotion called push-pull locomotion. The previous studies indicated that push-pull locomotion suppresses slip on loose soil compared with normal rotational traveling. However, the slip still occurred when the rover traversed loose soil with a high slope. Therefore, this paper focuses on the slip ratio of the rotational wheel during the extend and shrink locomotion. Furthermore, this paper proposes to change the slip ratio of the rotational wheel and suppresses the slip of the rover. The traveling experiment on loose soil suggested that the rover suppressed slip when the slip ratio of the rotational wheel was high.

In recent years, the number of small spacecraft missions has been increasing rapidly due to reducing spacecraft development costs and diversification of functions. This research deals with autonomous docking between small spacecraft. We propose an optimal control system to perform autonomous docking with high accuracy with limited sensor and actuator resources.

Visual Odometry(VO) is a technique to estimate the position of a robot by using images. Compared to the wheel odometry, the VO is more accurate because it does not depend on the wheel slip. In a smooth surface environment such as sandy terrain, however, the VO fails to process because of the lack of feature points. In such an environment, it is better not to execute VO in order to reduce the processing load. Therefore, this paper proposes a method that decides whether VO is executable or not based on variance of image. The Random Forest-based classifier is trained using the images and archives high accuracy.

Flyby imaging is one of the popular methods of deep space exploration. A vision-based tracking system is required to obtain high-quality images, which utilizes mission imager data as the sensor and performs navigation for accurate target tracking control. We are discussing the improvement of the navigation method considering realistic system constraints. In this paper, the data processing duration variation effects of the obtained image are validated via numerical simulation. In addition, their mitigation methods are also discussed.

This paper presents the dynamics modeling and simulation of flexible net behavior for space debris capture. Space debris, such as satellites that have been taken out of service due to malfunction or fuel shortage, often lose their communication and attitude control function. For secure capture mission, it is necessary to clarify the net behavior by simulation. However, studies on the simulation of debris capture by the net have addressed only the behavior during net deployment or a part of the contact with the target, and there are no studies on the net behavior until capture is completed. Therefor, in this study, we model and analyze the net behavior during space debris capture. By introducing contact between nets into the dynamics model used in the simulation, the problem of nets slipping through each other was solved, and thereby the behavior of nets entangling to capture the target was simulated.

Research and development of a simulator that can analyze the dynamic behavior of a soil traveling vehicle is underway for design development and preliminary verification of a traveling vehicle. There is a problem in shortening the analysis time on a large scale, and it has not been put into practical use. Therefore, in this research, we develop a soil model parameter identification method that can reproduce the soil macro-characteristics, and contribute to the refinement of the soil model.

Many planetary explorations have been conducted by rovers to investigate resources and the origin of life. However, the problem is that the wheels slip due to the soft ground that covers a large area of the planet. The method is proposed to utilize the distortion generated in the chassis section of the rover as a means of slip suppression. In this study, a new testing machine was developed and evaluated in order to obtain strain values under various slip conditions. The change in strain was also observed when the slip condition was varied. Comparison of single-wheel running tests confirmed the difference in the frequency range in which the strain spectrum appears and its variation with slip rate. The results of this FFT analysis show that slip estimation can be performed.

The surfaces of Mars and the Moon are covered by loose soil. Therefore, the legged rovers slip largely on these grounds in planetary exploration. We proposed a walking method for preventing legged rovers from slipping. In the proposed method, the supporting force that the leg of the rover is received is increased by imparting vibration to the ground. To improve the running performance of legged rover, the supporting force must be estimated to select a suitable vibra-tion that can efficiently increase the bearing capacity. In this study, we simulated the bearing capacity when imparting vibration to the ground by the discrete element method (DEM). The simulated result was similar to the actual change in the bearing capacity when imparting vibration qualitatively. This relationship offers valuable information for under-standing the mechanism whereby the bearing capacity is increased by imparting vibrations.

This paper proposes a detumbling method using eddy current brakes with permanent magnets for the second stage of the H-IIA rocket. This paper selects three candidate locations for generating the braking force and analyzes the effects of the eddy current depending on the location of the permanent magnet and the distance between the permanent magnet and the target surface with simulation and experiment. In the simulation, magnetic field analysis and dynamics simulation are combined to calculate the duration until complete detumbling. In the experiment, a small-sized mock-up of the target is used to verify the effect of the eddy current. The simulation and experimental analysis demonstrate the efficiency of the braking force depending on the locations.

To develop a passive stabilizer for an underwater camera system to generate undersea 3D map data using a towing underwater robot. A prototype gimbal mechanism with hydraulic components was fabricated and evaluated to reduce image blurring.

A robot unit packaged with a flexible plastic film was developed. By packaging the robot with a thin plastic film, waterproofing was achieved at a low cost and in a simple method. This robot can be used not only as a mobile robot, a fish like robot and robot hand. This robot can operate underwater and in living areas by being waterproof. This study developed a robot based on the “robot packaging method.” This method is a technology of vacuum packaging a robot and insulating fluid in a film. In this study, a prototype of the proposed robot unit was also made and experiments of movements were conducted on its swimming and grasping.

In recent years, the efficient jellyfish removal work is required because the massive blooms of jellyfish occur every year and that is causing damage to the local fisheries industry. Our research team has proposed a method for jellyfish removal using a small-size underwater robot. Last summer, we conducted an experiment in the Seto Inland Sea to test the robot's effectiveness in removing jellyfish. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that it is difficult to contact the removal device to target the jellyfish. Therefore, in this study, we develop a jellyfish removal device which has wide suction range. In the evaluation of developed device, a Jellyfish sample can be suctioned 500 mm away, and the flow velocity at the suction inlet is 0.13 m/s. Also, all Jellyfish samples could be crushed to a size within 20 mm in length and width and 40 mm in length, which is sufficient to remove jellyfish.

In this study, we have focused on the high maneuverability of fish, such as rapid turning and acceleration, and aim to develop a fish-type robot that can perform such movements in the water. In a previous study, a fish-type robot was developed using snap-through buckling and successfully swam. However, the achievement of high-mobility swimming required an increasing swimming speed and a more fish-like shape. In this paper, a fish-shaped robot was developed based on data from scans of a real sea bream. In order to increase the swimming speed, the robot was equipped with a continuous snap-through buckling mechanism. The results of the swimming experiments showed that the developed robot successfully swam, but it was also found that some parts of the continuous snap-through buckling mechanism and the control mechanism of the elastic body needed to be improved to increase the swimming speed.

Hand is a typical site of contact with the external world, so robotic hands with various functions have been studied. In this paper, we focused on hand-holding between human and robot. We proposes a five-fingered robotic hand that joins hands with people depending on the state of hand-holding. Using proximity and force sensors mounted on the sides of the fingers, the robot hand estimates how to be gripped by a person and holds their hand back in the same way as human. When the person relaxes their hand, the robot hand opens its fingers and terminates hand-holding. We conducted an experiment to apply this hand to robot guidance and confirmed that the state of the finger’s sides is important to distinguish between different hand-holding ways.

A leader-follower robot has the feature of remote operation, so that it can be applied to a work environment which is dangerous to its operator. However, there still be a risk that the operator of this robot may make an erroneous operation due to many reasons, such as fatigue. Based on the feature of remote operation, the follower robot will faithfully perform the erroneous operation, which may be dangerous. In this research, we are aiming to develop a method that can suppress the effect of erroneous operation by estimating the operator’s correct intention, and using the correct intention to operate the leader-follower robot. In this report, we carry out a method that improves the accuracy of intention estimation method by applying a kalman filter.

Impedance control is a widely used control method for physical human-robot collaboration systems. This paper proposes a new method to generate the damping profile to improve the performance of human-robot collaboration. First, monotone cubic interpolation is used to make smooth damping trajectories from several data points. The damping values at each data point are then optimized using bayesian optimization. Bayesian optimization is modified to consider task failures, and discretization of parameter space is used to improve the optimization process. Finally, experiments are conducted with a 7-DOF robot arm in a simplified 2-dimensional manipulation task, and results showed that the proposed method help improve the task performance.

In human-robot communication, it will be necessary in the future to persuade people to follow instructions in order to encourage or change certain behaviors. However, persuasion by others has the problem that its effect does not last once the robot becomes accustomed to it. Therefore, we aim to investigate a method of generating more persuasive robot behavior by incorporating not only comfort but also discomfort-inducing behavior, taking into account comfort to the person. In this paper, we present the results of a survey conducted on adult subjects to investigate whether robot eye gaze behaviors and gestures designed as rewarding and punitive behaviors are useful for persuasion, and the impressions that the gestures give.

The need for technology to predict subjective experiences based on physiological signals has increased. Our study investigated the relationship between the comicalness of comedian videos and skin conductance responses recorded while watching videos. Through a user study involving eleven participants, subjective scores of a video’s funniness were predicted by multiple linear regression analysis using five types of feature values computed from skin conductance responses. We found that the most influential feature is the number of local peaks in the skin conductance response per unit of time. The correlation coefficient between the observed and predicted funniness scores is 0.53. These findings are useful for the objective evaluation of entertainment experiences.

Japan is currently facing a super-aging society，and the need for preventive healthcare is increasing. However, there is a shortage of caregivers who can provide appropriate advice to elderly persons during exercise. So，there has been researches on a health promotion support system that can assess the suitability exercise movements and provide improvement advice. However，conventional studies mostly use joint angles as indicators to evaluate exercise movements，and there are few studies that evaluate the rhythm of exercise movements. Rhythm can be an indicator of declining physical function in the elderly and can also provide users of the system with the enjoyment of moving their bodies. In this paper，we propose a method for evaluating the rhythm of exercise movements using a smart device. In this system，a recurrent neural network is used for posture recognition，and the obtained output waveform is evaluated for rhythm by applying autocorrelation function.

A co-presentation experiment at a science museum was conducted to investigate the effect of a human-robot memory-sharing dialogue on impressions of the relationship between the two. The results revealed that joint recall of the presenter’s personal episodes elicited positive impressions from the participants.