This paper presents an optical flow based novel technique to perceive the instant motion velocity of mobile robots. The primary focus of this study is to determine the robot’s ego-motion using displacement field in temporally consecutive image pairs. In contrast to most previous approaches for estimating velocity, we employ a polynomial expansion based dense optical flow approach and propose a quadratic model based RANSAC refinement of flow fields to render our method more robust with respect to noise and outliers. Accordingly, techniques for geometrical transformation and interpretation of the inter-frame motion are presented. Advantages of our proposal are validated by real experimental results conducted on Pioneer robot.

Estimation efficiency is one of key topics in computationally intense optical flow algorithm. Traditional numerical iterative methods are effective at eliminating the high frequency components of the estimation error, while keeping most of low frequency components unchanged. In this paper, we consider the multi-grid based real-time implementation of dense optical flow computation by classical Horn-Schunck model. For this purpose, establishing of the linear set of equation, which is required in linear multi-grid model, is carefully studied, and the overall multi-grid framework is presented. Efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated by experimental results.

This paper proposes a robotic walker system with standing, walking and seating assistance function. Our system focuses on domestic use for aged person who needs nursing in their daily life. Our key ideas are two topics. The first topic is combination of standing assistance function and walking assistance function. In previous works, many assistance devices are specialized in only ¿standing-up operation¿ or ¿walking operation¿. However, in their daily life, elderly people need standing, walking and seating assistance continuously by the same device. Therefore, our developing assistance system can support both operations by a small sized mechanism which is easy to use in the home. The second topic is a seating position adjustment assistance. From questionnaires of nursing specialists, a seating position adjustment requires the elderly people to walk backward and it is difficult operation for them. Furthermore, in many cases, a failure of this operation causes a fracture which has high risk to fall into bedridden life. Thus, our developing system can assist the aged users to adjust the seating position safety. The performance of our proposed system is verified by experiments using our prototype.

This paper proposes a robotic walker system with standing and walking assistance function. Our system focuses on domestic use for aged person who needs nursing in their daily life. Our key ideas are two topics. The first topic is combination of standing assistance function and walking assistance function. In previous works, many assistance devices are specialized in only “standing-up operation” or “walking operation”. However, in their daily life, elderly person needs standing, walking and seating assistance continuously by a same device. Our developing assistance system can support both operations by a small sized mechanism with low cost for domestic use. The second topic is steady standing assistance operation using an assistance manipulator and an active walker. In order to use the remaining physical strength of the patient, it is required to maintain the patient’s body posture which enables him to use own strength easily. According to the patient’s posture during standing up, our proposed system selects more appropriate device and controller, and realizes the standing assistance with steady posture of the patient based on the nursing specialists. The performance of our proposed system is verified by experiments using our prototype.

This paper proposes a robotic walker system with standing and walking assistance device. Our system focuses on domestic use for aged person who needs nursing in their daily life. Our key ideas are two topics. The first topic is combination of standing assistance function and walking assistance function. In previous works, many assistance devices are specialized in only “standing-up operation” or “walking operation”. However, in their daily life, elderly person requires standing, walking and seating assistance by a same device continuously. Our developing assistance system can support both operations by a small sized mechanism with low cost for domestic use. The second topic is standing assistance operation using assistance manipulator and active walker function. In order to maintain the stability of the patients during this motion, it is required to maintain the body balance of the patient into the range of his foot. According to the patient’s posture during standing up, our control system selects more appropriate controller for realizing his stability. The performance of our proposed control scheme is experimented by computer simulations and experiments using our prototype.

In this paper, a RTM-based network distributed monitoring system for human assistance robot system was developed to improve the interaction among the users and local service robotic system. Home integration robot system and network monitoring system using QuickCam Orbit cameras were developed and demonstrated from June 9 to June 19 at the 2005 World Exposition, Aichi, Japan. Improvements of network distributed monitoring system using IEEE1394 cameras with high performance and high resolution have been done in order to extend the application of system. Robot technology middleware (RTM) was used in the developed system. By using RTM, we can develop cameras functional elements as "RT software components" that can be implemented by different programming languages, run in different operating system, or connected in different networks to inter-operate. It is also easy to create comprehensive robot system application by re-using existing modules thus facilitating network-distributed software sharing and improving the cost of writing and maintaining software.

This paper proposes a walker system with power assistance device for standing up motion. Our system focuses on family use for aged person who needs nursing in their daily life. Our key ideas are two topics. The first topic is new assistance manipulator mechanism with four parallel linkages. Our proposed manipulator mechanism requires only smaller actuators and realizes rigid structure with lighter linkages comparing with general manipulator. Thus, we can design our assistance system compactly with low-cost using our mechanism. The second topic is the combination of force and position control. According to the patient's posture during standing up, our control system selects more appropriate control method from them. We use the reference of standing-up motion which is based on the typical standing up motion by nursing specialist for realizing the natural assistance. The performance of our proposed assistance system is verified by computer simulations and experiments using our prototype.

The intelligent home service robotic system has been developed in order to assist the aged or the disabled people in the population-aging society. The developed robotic system was demonstrated from June 9 to June 19 at the 2005 World Exposition, Aichi, Japan. The purpose of our research is developing robotic system to provide daily services such as bringing some objects to the elderly or disabled wheelchair users. Network distributed monitoring system was also developed in order to monitor the state of robotic system working and the state of the aged or disabled. The developed system uses robot technology middleware (RTM), which was developed by AIST (Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, Japan) to promote application of robot technology (RT) in various fields. RTM is based on CORBA, so has high scaling and inter-operating ability and facilitates network distributed software and sharing. Using RT middleware, we can develop robotic functional elements as "RT software component", which makes application and system integration easier. This paper introduces the architecture of the developed demonstration robotic system and the results of a demonstration conducted at the exhibition

This paper proposes a novel method to integrate Internet distributed robotic systems using Common Object Request Broker Architecture for implementing telecare robotic system to aid the aged or disabled. The proposed method makes system have low cost and wide availability, high scaling and inter-operating ability to allow the clients and server objects, written in different languages, run in different operating system, and connected in different network to inter-operate. It also makes it easier for system to be extended and integrated with the other technologies and applications distributed over the Internet. Using CORBA as a communication architecture, we developed hardware base, Web user management server, task-level robot arm control server, live image feedback server, mobile robot control server and iGPS server, which can provide some basic care services to aid the aged and disabled.

Because the elderly population is growing while the number of people to take care of them is declining, the aging problem is becoming an increasingly important social issue. Thus, developing an inexpensive support system for these elderly people staying alone at home or small-scale distributed facilities is becoming particularly important. The paper proposes a basic platform design of a network distributed telecare robotic systems using CORBA as communication architecture, which has high scaling and inter-operating ability that allows the different support groups to make their own independent computing decisions to develop their applications. It also has remote accessibility for caregivers, and the other helpers from any location where a Web browser is available. Using the developed platform, we implemented a task-level robot arm server, a mobile robot control server, and a live image feedback server, which realized some basic telecare services for the aged and disabled.

Because the elderly population is growing while the number of people to take care of them is declining, we propose an Internet telerobotic system to assist the aged or disabled in their homes when their caregivers are away. We analyze typical teleoperation robotic systems and design an Internet telerobotic system using CORBA . We detail the system's features, architecture, and implementation. The proposed system gives users the ability to control the robotic system remotely by an intuitive user interface. The client can transparently invoke methods on the application servers across the network without knowing where the application servers are located, what programming language the application is written in, or what operating system is being used. This is because, in developing and implementing the system, CORBA for the distributed, object-oriented applications was used.