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ABSTRACT: Our world is getting older and older (OECD 2009), and therefore there is considerable expectation for more widespread home, medical, and nursing care services to assist
not self-sufficient elderly people, both from the physical and psychological points of view. In this context, robots are expected
to perform human tasks such as operating equipment designed for humans in dangerous environments, providing personal assistance,
social care, cognitive therapy, entertainment, and education (Kozima, Nakagawa et al. 2007). These robots should be capable of a smooth and natural adaptation and interaction with their human partners as well as
with the environment. They should also be able to communicate naturally with humans, especially in home and personal assistance
applications for elderly and/or handicapped persons. Moreover, these devices should be safe and, more in general, should never
have a negative effect on their human partners, neither physical nor emotional.
12/2009: pages 449-456;
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ABSTRACT: Personal robots and Robot Technology (RT)-based assistive devices are expected to play a substantial role in our society,
largely populated by elders; they will play an active role in joint works and community life with humans. In particular, these
robots are expected to play an important role for the assistance of elderly and disabled people during normal activities of
daily living (ADLs). To achieve this result, personal robots should be also capable of human-like emotion expressions. In
this perspective we developed a whole body bipedal humanoid robot, named KOBIAN, which is also capable to express human-like
emotions. In this paper we present the mechanical and modular design of KOBAIN.
12/2009: pages 465-472;
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Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction, HRI 2009, La Jolla, California, USA, March 9-13, 2009; 01/2009
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ABSTRACT: Personal robots and robot technology (RT)-based assistive devices are expected to play a major role in our elderly-dominated society, with an active participation to joint works and community life with humans, as partner and as friends for us. The authors think that the emotion expression of a robot is effective in joint activities of human and robot. In addition, we also think that bipedal walking is necessary to robots which are active in human living environment. But, there was no robot which has those functions. And, it is not clear what kinds of functions are effective actually. Therefore we developed a new bipedal walking robot which is capable to express emotions. In this paper, we present the design and the preliminary evaluation of the new head of the robot with only a small number of degrees of freedom for facial expression.
2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2008, May 19-23, 2008, Pasadena, California, USA; 01/2008
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ABSTRACT: Previously, the realization of ascending and descending stairs and landing pattern modification control by WL-16RII were reported. However, it is difficult to use the landing pattern modification control when ascending stairs, because of the insufficient stroke of linear actuators. In this report, the design of a double stage linear actuator with a larger expansion and contraction ratio is described. The new linear actuators developed have been installed in WL-16RII, and several experiments were conducted. Through experiments involving walking with a wide step length and ascending a stair with landing pattern modification control, the effectiveness of the actuator developed is confirmed.
2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2007, 10-14 April 2007, Roma, Italy; 01/2007
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Massimiliano Zecca,
Filippo Cavallo,
Minoru Saito, Nobutsuna Endo,
Yu Mizoguchi,
Stefano Sinigaglia,
Kazuko Itoh,
Hideaki Takanobu,
Giuseppe Megali,
Oliver Tonet,
Paolo Dario,
Andrea Pietrabissa,
Atsuo Takanishi
2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, October 29 - November 2, 2007, Sheraton Hotel and Marina, San Diego, California, USA; 01/2007
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ABSTRACT: Many control methods have been studied on the assumption that the feet of biped robots contact the ground with four points. However, it is difficult for almost all of such biped robots to maintain four-point contact on uneven terrains because they have rigid and flat soles. In order to solve the problem, foot mechanisms should be studied. In 2003, we developed WS-1R (Waseda Shoes - No.1 Refined) which is able to maintain four-point contact. However, it is difficult to deal with the concave or convex ground because of the problems of the contact detection and sideways slip. So, WS-5 (Waseda Shoes - No.5) has been developed. To avoid the slip of the foot, a cam-slider locking system consisting of a solenoid and a cam is constructed and installed at the foot. Also, linear encoders are employed to measure the position of the foot sliders. Through walking experiments on uneven terrains, the effectiveness of WS-5 is confirmed.
2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2007, 10-14 April 2007, Roma, Italy; 01/2007
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ABSTRACT: This paper describes a passive dynamic model of passenger for a biped walking vehicle. The walking pattern generation that enables stable walking even if passenger sits naturally is also described. The model consists of lower-limbs part assumed to be fixed to the robot, and the upper body assumed to be 1 particle with 2 DOF mounted on the seat via 2 springs and dampers. The parameters are identified through waist shaking experiments by using a force-torque sensor under the seat. The walking pattern generation method involves the proposed model being built onto a strict model of the robot, and through iteration computation, a stable walking pattern is generated. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed through experiments
2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2006, October 9-15, 2006, Beijing, China; 01/2006
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ABSTRACT: Many researchers have been studying on walking control methods for biped robots. However, the effectiveness of these control methods was not verified in outdoor environments such as pedestrian roads and gravel roads. In this paper, a landing pattern modification method adaptable to uneven terrain in a real environment is proposed which is based on a predictive attitude compensation control and a nonlinear compliance control. This method does not require any other sensors except force sensors. Also, a new biped foot system is described which can form larger support polygons on uneven terrain than conventional biped foot systems. Using the modification method and the foot system, WL-16RII (Waseda Leg-No.16 Refined II) achieved a stable walk on bumpy terrain with 20 mm height and 10 degrees inclination. Furthermore, a stable dynamic walk was realized on a paved road, when a human rode it. Through various walking experiments, the effectiveness of the method was confirmed
2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2006, October 9-15, 2006, Beijing, China; 01/2006
