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ABSTRACT: In rescue operation with a group of rescue robots, the robot has an ability to move around freely even if there are doors parting rooms. Since Great Hanshin Awaji earthquake, the rescue robot series named UMRS have been developed. This time the robot with a door opening system has been developed. This robot has the manipulator to locate the end effecter precisely to door knob position and the hand to grip and rotate this knob. The outline of this robot and the sequence of this door opening are reported in this paper.
SICE Annual Conference, 2008; 09/2008
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ABSTRACT: Japan is a natural disasters prone country. In the Hanshin Awaji great earthquake in 1995, over 6000 people were killed. If appropriate rescue activities had been performed, the probability of survival would have been fairly high. From such experience, various proposal and development of rescue apparatus are being researched now. In our project, we develop small searching machine called UMRS (utility vehicle for search) and a system aiming at "discovery of the sufferers". UMRS robot, with many sensors, go into a collapsed house and perform searching for victims. We aim at early detection of the sufferers by arranging a lot of UMRS groups in the calamity spot and one or a small number of manipulator controls them. UMRS-V has a lot of sensor but in this paper, we tested and developed UMRS-V robots using carbon dioxide sensor (TGS4161) to search for victims. We have done experiment with the TGS4161 sensor, found out its characteristics. Experiment has shown that TGS4161 sensor can be applied in rescue robot and it can give us good information to search for victims. From that we proposed method for searching victims in debris with better strategy.
SICE 2004 Annual Conference; 09/2004
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ABSTRACT: In order to display delicate touch feeling of surface of some materials, active touch of human hand movements should be considered. In this paper, a wearable stimulation device that can produce various distributed stimuli on human skin in response to hand movements was developed using ICPF (Ionic Conducting Polymer gel Film) actuators. Characteristics of touch feel of roughness were measured using vibratory stimulation. The results showed that the threshold amplitude under active touch were smaller than under passive touch. A stimulation method which generate selective stimuli to sense receptors in accordance with velocities and accelerations of hand motions was proposed. It was confirmed experimentally that some kinds of pattern of driving waves express touch feels in response to hand movements.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2003. (IROS 2003). Proceedings. 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 11/2003
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ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the software architecture of a rescue robot, named FDNet. This architecture provides the rescue robot with intelligence and flexibility. When this architecture is used, the robot system is described using networks. These networks are composed by data and processing units. The data, referred to as "data", is a distributed component. The processing units, referred to as "relation", are a distributed and parallel-processing component, which can refer to any existing Data. We consider nodes that can formally connect to any other node, and relations that can be organized according to human's or any other network's pattern. This architecture was called FDNet (flat-distributed networks for rescue robots). We describe proposition of the architecture and its implementation for a robot. Then, we report some experimental results. We provide this architecture for any intelligent rescue system.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2003. (IROS 2003). Proceedings. 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 11/2003
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ABSTRACT: This paper deals with flat-distributed architecture for a rescue robot. This architecture provides the rescue robot with intelligence and flexibility. When this architecture is used, the robot system is described using networks. These networks are composed by data and processing agents. The data, referred to as "data", is a distributed component. The processing agents, referred to as "relation", are a distributed and parallel-processing component, which can refer to any existing data. We consider nodes that can formally connect to any other node, and relations that can be organized according to human's or any other network's pattern. This architecture was called "FDNet(Flat-Distributed Networks for Rescue System)". First, we describe the proposition of the architecture and its implementation for a robot. Then we report some experimental results. We provide this architecture for any intelligent rescue system.
Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation, 2003. Proceedings. 2003 IEEE International Symposium on; 08/2003
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ABSTRACT: Using dynamic cloth simulation systems, animators are required to control cloth animations by parameters. By this method, it is hard to avoid trial and error because imaging the animation from parameters is difficult. In this paper, we propose the method by which animators can control the cloth animation not by parameters but by the intuitive operation.
SICE 2002. Proceedings of the 41st SICE Annual Conference; 09/2002
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ABSTRACT: Describes a system whereby one can input key frames of movement by Labanotation (the choreographer's notation for body movement), modify the movement by field direction symbol and continuous quantities, transform it into body movement data, and show the movement by computer graphic animation.
SICE 2002. Proceedings of the 41st SICE Annual Conference; 09/2002
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ABSTRACT: If actuators can work stably and their output characteristics are robust with varying load and frequency, it is very easy to design and control general-purpose machines that have such load-varying free actuators. We have proposed the control idea to make actuators robust under varying load, called Dynamic Impedance Matching of Actuators, so that the output of an actuator is not influenced by load over a certain range of frequency. In this paper, we look into the stability condition of this control and find the relationship of the phase constraint between Dynamic Impedance Matching of Actuators and the H<sub>∞</sub> controller that represents robust control, and also try to construct the H<sub>∞</sub> controller by using the idea of Dynamic Impedance Matching of Actuators.
SICE 2002. Proceedings of the 41st SICE Annual Conference; 09/2002
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ABSTRACT: This paper describes an interface for multi modal human-robot interaction, which enables people to introduce a newcomer robot about different attributes of objects and places in the room through speech commands and hand gestures. Robot generates an environment based on knowledge learned through communication with human and uses this map for navigation.
SICE 2002. Proceedings of the 41st SICE Annual Conference; 09/2002
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ABSTRACT: Molluskan robots perform their tasks by freely deforming their shape like slugs and amoebas on the basis of soft actuator materials. This paper presents a new actuator model, Fukuhara-Tadokoro model of a high polymer actuator, ICPF (or IPMC) as a fundamental of design, fabrication, control and application of future molluskan robotics. Ionic migration in actuator material causes electric unbalance of sulfo groups producing lateral strain in addition to volume change by water unbalance. Simulation results show internal state change according to the motion principle.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2002. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 02/2002
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ABSTRACT: This study presents a tactile feel display of virtual reality for subtle fine touch of clothes. The device developed using soft high polymer gel actuators could express subtle differences of touch of clothes, especially rough materials such as a towel and denim. Considering the superiority of vision in the multimodal sensational perception, a virtual tactile feel display integrated with visual information which express more real touch of cloth was proposed. In order to evaluate the influence of visual information adding to the tactile feel quantitatively, a factor analysis was performed using adjective pair scales. Factor analysis applied to the real materials showed that the roughness factor is highly correlated with the visual sensation although the softness factor is relatively independent from image information. The same analysis applied to the artificial tactile feel showed more complex results. It was confirmed that vision could help the recognition of tactile feel only when the characteristics of the material was expressed well by visual information although could also mislead tactile perception when visual information was not appropriate. The superiority of visual information was also evaluated by applying wrong visual information different from the artificial tactile feels.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2002. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 02/2002
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ABSTRACT: Describes an interface for multi modal human robot interaction,
which enables people to introduce a newcomer robot to different
attributes of objects and places in the room through speech commands and
hand gestures. The robot makes an environment map of the room based on
knowledge learned through communication with human and uses this map for
navigation. The developed system consists of several sections including:
natural language processing, posture recognition, object localization
and map generation. This system uses a combination of multiple sources
of information and model matching to detect and track a human hand so
that the user can point toward an object of interest and guide the robot
to go near to it or locate that object's position in the room. The
position of objects in the room is located by a monocular camera vision
and depth from focus method
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2001. Proceedings. 2001 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 02/2001
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ABSTRACT: The authors are researching human and humanoid movement. They
discuss the transformation system among the movement score, the movement
description in computer and the body movement data which are used to
generate computer graphics animation of humanoid movement. The proposed
humanoid movement description method can describe not only the movement
information which are described by Labanotation but also more detailed
movement information. This movement description is called "movement MIDI
based on Labanotaton" or "continuous Labanotation", and it exists
between the Labanoation (which the choreographer can read but the
computer cannot) and the humanoid movement data (which the computer can
read but the choreographer cannot). It can be read by both the
choreographer and the computer, and it is useful to modify the humanoid
movement data in order to modify the CG animation, since the information
of Labanotation is not sufficient to generate natural display of CG
animation. We report the results of transformation from the humanoid
motion captured data into the proposed movement description in computer
Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2001. Proceedings. 10th IEEE International Workshop on; 02/2001
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ABSTRACT: In order to design emotional actions of humanoid, the authors analyze the motions of the axes of a Buntaku puppet which is manipulated by an expert of puppet manipulation. The axes' motion are segmented to some phrases, and the emotional factor of the puppet's action are explained by time length and amplitude of each phrase. This knowledge is interpreted by the movement score Labanotation
Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2000. RO-MAN 2000. Proceedings. 9th IEEE International Workshop on; 02/2000
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ABSTRACT: The system introduced in the paper estimates the 3D position of a
human's head and face by using the depth from focus method. First the
system locates the human's head and face by using motion detection,
Hough transform and a statistical color model. Then by changing pan,
tilt and zoom of camera we put the face in the center of the camera's
field of view. Then we use information from focusing the ring of an
autofocus camera to measure the distance between the human face and the
camera. By having information about the absolute position of the camera
and its pan and tilt angles we can compute the absolute position of the
person in the room. In the case of a person with small motions, this
system measures distance with less than a 10 cm error. The measurable
distance range is from 90 cm up to 340 cm
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 2000 IEEE International Conference on; 02/2000
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ABSTRACT: This paper introduces a robotic system that uses a PTZ camera to
find the human in the room and locate its position. Then the robot is
guided to go near to the human. This includes human detection and
localization, robot localization and robot navigation. Human's head and
face is detected by using a combination of motion detection, shape
analysis and color information. The 3D position of human's head and face
is estimated by using the depth from focus method. For robot
localization we use a very fast measuring system that utilizes
ultrasonic and infrared signals simultaneously. For robot navigation we
use a map of environment consisting of doors, walls and static objects.
After locating human and robot a visibility graph is searched for the
shortest path and obstacle avoidance is done in a reflexive method using
ultrasonic sensors
Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2000. RO-MAN 2000. Proceedings. 9th IEEE International Workshop on; 02/2000
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ABSTRACT: The ICPF (ionic conducting polymer gel film) actuator is a new
high polymer gel actuator by which revolutionary robotic mechanisms are
expected. Actuator models for CAE are essential to the robotic design.
However, present black/gray-box models of ICPF cannot express its
nonlinear characteristics with enough accuracy. In this paper, a
white-box actuator model is proposed on the basis of physicochemical
hypotheses on the motion principle which are supported at present. In
this model, travel of sodium ions and water molecules in the actuator
membrane is modeled. Internal stress is generated by swell and
contraction of the gel by water content change, electrostatic force of
fixed sulfonic acid groups, and momentum conservation effect. Simulation
results show higher accuracy on transient response and nonlinear
characteristics in comparison with conventional models
Robotics and Automation, 2000. Proceedings. ICRA '00. IEEE International Conference on; 02/2000
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ABSTRACT: It is difficult for the conventional tactile displays to express
fine touch as a surface of cloth. A mechanical device appropriate for
minute distributed stimuli on human skin does not exist. This paper
proposes a ciliary device using soft high polymer gel actuators (ICPF)
as a solution to this problem. This new device can generate various
distributed stimuli to human sense receptors. It was experimentally
confirmed that, combinations of vibratory stimuli of high frequency and
low frequency produced complex tactile feels. Comparison of the
artificial tactile feels and cloth material samples demonstrated that
this device developed could display subtle distinction in the touch of
cloth
Robotics and Automation, 2000. Proceedings. ICRA '00. IEEE International Conference on; 02/2000
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ABSTRACT: In order to design emotional actions of computer graphic
characters, the authors analysed the actions of a Bunraku puppet which
is manipulated by an expert of puppet manipulation. The puppet's action
is decomposed into a main part which is the motion of the puppet's axis
and the accompaniment which is the relative motion with respect to the
motion of the axis. The emotional actions of the puppet are explained by
the phase factor and the amplitude factor of the motion of the puppet's
axis. Based on this analysis, a simple method to design emotional
actions are obtained
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 2000 IEEE International Conference on; 02/2000
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ABSTRACT: The Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake killed more than 6500 on
January 17, 1995. Many people barely escaped from the debris and
actively saved buried people. Rescue facilities are really important for
robust social systems. Robotics and mechatronics are effective for
advanced rescue equipment and systems. However, there has been little
research and development performed until now. In order for robotics
researchers to start, analysis of the tasks and requirements is
necessary. In this research, the processes of rescue activities just
after the disaster were investigated. Specifications of rescue robotic
facilities are proposed on the basis of the analysis
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2000. (IROS 2000). Proceedings. 2000 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 02/2000
