Internet and cloud-based robot services and their platforms are becoming attractive. Many related works have been also done, such as DAvinCi, ROS on Android, and RoboEarth. However, when robot services are provided via computer networks, very reliable services are required to deal with short/long-term disconnection between services and robots due to wireless LAN disconnection, robot service problems, system error on robots, and so on. In this paper, we adopt Robot Service Network Protocol (RSNP) as a robot service platform in order to integrate robot services with Internet services. In addition, we propose a method and architecture to realize reliable cloud-based robot services for RSNP in a communication view point.

We developed an embedded vision system that can accelerate the basic image processing functions for mobile robot navigation with compact hardware featuring low power consumption. The system is composed of a digital signal processor (DSP) and a dedicated LSI for low-level image processing, specifically for spatial filtering, feature extraction, and block matching operations. The image processing LSI has a dedicated systolic array processor consisting of 64 processing elements to accelerate basic block operations for image feature calculation and correlation-based image matching. The power consumption is only 10 W, about one-seventh that of a typical Pentium 4 personal computer, but the processing speed for correlation matching is roughly three times faster than such a system. With this vision system, we implemented a stereo-vision based navigation algorithm on our mobile service robot and performed a visual navigation experiment in a building hallway

To study autonomous control of a space robot, the authors developed their Advanced Space Robot Testbed with Redundant Arms (ASTRA). Berthing a satellite moving in space is a difficult and dangerous task when done manually. This paper describes a robot which berthed a mockup satellite moving and rotating in zero gravity. Features of the robot include autonomous approach to a moving target satellite using visual satellite motion estimation, using real-time visual tracking control to track satellite handles with two robot arms, and grasping the satellite handles with minimum mechanical shock using a flexible wrist mechanism and impedance control. The authors ran their satellite berthing experiment on the ASTRA to check its performance.>