The purpose of this study is to execute a beverage can opening task by an articulated versatile robot arm, which is often executed in our daily life. We generated beverage can opening trajectories for position controlled single robot arm and dual robot arm. We analyzed the humans' can opening operations and generated trajectories for opening the lid of beverage can. They are sequential rotational and translational motions for a single robot arm, and their concurrent cooperated motions for a dual robot arm. We confirmed that the beverage can opening operations by single and dual robot arms are successfully achieved based on our generated trajectories. Additionally, from the comparison of these two trajectories, we found out that the trajectory of the dual robot arm is robust and efficient. And, the configuration of the motions of single and dual robot arms is different, but operations to the beverage can by each robot arm are essentially the same.

In this research, we develop user-oriented RT service proposal system in Kukanchi. Kukanchi is interactive Human-Space Design and Intelligence. By carrying out data mining of user information, service history, sensor data, and object data, this system finds out those relationships and gives weight to each of them. As a result of experiment, this system came to be able to propose “Tsuide Service” (Additional RT service) that each user expects.

Human commonsense is required to improve quality of robotic application. However, to acquire the necessary knowledge, robot needs to evaluate the appropriateness of the data it has collected. This paper presents an evaluation method, by combining the weighting mechanism in commonsense databases with a set of weighting factors. The method was verified on our Basic-level Knowledge Network. We conducted questionnaire to collect a commonsense data set and estimate weighting factors. Result showed that, the proposed method was able to build Robot Technology (RT) Ontology for a smart “Bring something” robotic service. More importantly, it allowed robot to learn new knowledge when necessary. An intuitive human-robot interface application was developed as an example base on our approach.

This paper proposes our approach to disambiguate human pointing gesture by using commonsense knowledge. Pointing gesture is a natural way to specify the object that a user needs in the “Bring something” service. However, error in gesture recognition makes robot difficult to select the correct candidate object when there are multiple objects located closely together. To solve this problem, Robot Technology (RT) Ontology was used to make assumption about human activity and necessary objects for the activity. By combining this commonsense reasoning with the spatial constrain from human's pointing direction, robot is able to find appropriate object. Experiment showed the successful rate of object selection was improved, and therefore robotic service becomes more intuitive.

This paper presents a novel approach for RT Ontology development, including ontology learning and evolution mechanism. In service robotics systems, understanding the relationship between everyday objects and user intention is the key feature to provide suitable services according to context. RT Ontology has shown to be an efficient technique to represent this relationship. In the proposed method, text corpus grabbed from search engines and lightweight natural language processing techniques were used for term extraction and enabling RT Ontology automatic creation. On the other hand, ontology evolution mechanism is introduced. With these learning and evolution capabilities, the presented RT Ontology model may adapt dynamically to the changes of environment and human activities. This will help to improve the robustness of current RT service generation systems, while reduce much of required labor work for ontology development. Experiments were conducted to show the effectiveness of proposed method.

In this research, we propose the service management system design of robot technology (RT) service for interactive human-space design and intelligence to make robot provide appropriate services according to situations. For this, we propose to define that "service" as an order that the end user requests and "task" as elements that compose "service". We focus on the development of the system that manages services for various robots to work by cooperating. And we systematize RAC (robot action command) for service generation by the system. In this paper, we describe the outline of RT-service management system and experiments.

In this research, we propose the robot technology (RT) ontology for interactive human-space design and intelligence to make robot provide appropriate services according to situations. For this, we propose to define that "main task" as a task that the user requests and "Tsuide task" as an essential task accompanied with the "main task" to complete it. We focus on the development of the system for identifying and defining "Tsuide task" that is changed by the intention of user and the main task. We name the proposing technique as "RT ontology" which can be used for the infrastructure technology for structuring space information. In this paper, we describe the outline of RT ontology and experiments.

Non-elastic hyper-flexible elements like tethers and ropes will have various possibilities of unconventional manipulations. In this paper, casting and winding manipulation of hyperflexible manipulators (HFM) is proposed. The HFM is modeled as an underactuated multi-link system connected by non-elastic passive joints, and simulation results with dynamic parameters heuristically determined corresponding to the experimental results show the validity of the proposed non-elastic model. The simulation results also correspond to the experimental ones with actuation at the base joint. Observations on the simulation results is derived to reveal a better casting actuation to succeed in winding to an object. Then, single swing actuation for winding is proposed and verified in simulations

The goal of this paper is to realize a hands free operating system for analytical work on protein crystal using a micro hand and an integrated vision system. At first, the operation for the protein crystal analysis is summarized to make it clear what kind of tasks should be necessary for automatic operation. Secondly, the proposed system is briefly reviewed, which is constructed with a two-fingered micro hand system and an all-in-focus microscopic system. Thirdly, a new localization criterion for transparent objects with the all-in-focus system is proposed for the protein crystal operation. Finally, experimental results show the validity of the proposed system and algorithm.

This paper describes the technique to grasp the micro transparent objects, such as crystal and cell, using the integrated vision system. At first, several 3D modeling techniques for transparent object are surveyed, which were mainly applied to use the polarization technique. Secondly, polarization characteristics on micro transparent object are evaluated. Thirdly, integrated vision system for micro objects is briefly reviewed. Then, to solve the problem of the transparent object with this integrated vision system, several new methods based on the volume rendering and edge methods information using the integrated vision system is proposed. Finally, the modeling and handling technique are proposed.

We consider a teaching system that covers the stages of task from planning to on-site teaching, and propose for it a structured description based on task properties. A multimodal communication-teaching-advisor (MCTA) system is used for on-site teaching for a tool-manipulating task. The modular structure and object-oriented task handling program enable it to be applied to various robot systems and lets system developers customize the interface easily. The interface allows the operator and robot to share internal and external sensor data via nonverbal media. The intentions of an inexpert operator, who has only common knowledge and ordinary abilities, can then be transferred to the robot system via nonverbal operation. Experiments show that two different types of robot controller could be controlled by this teaching system, and the nominal task program was designed for an environment with two controllers.

The development of robot systems must be simplified and made less expensive so that they can be used more widely in various industrial fields. We propose a component architecture of a robot-teaching system based on a universal task model, that enables fast and easy development of robot-teaching systems for various types of work.

The previously proposed multimedia-communication (MC) robot-teaching pendant interface has been given an improved interface function and has been implemented into a modular system structure. The modular structure enables it to be applied to various robot systems, and the improved interface enables the operator and robot to share internal and external sensor data via nonverbal media. The intentions of an operator with only common knowledge and abilities can then be transferred to the robot via nonverbal operation. Using the MC pendant interface, the operator sets the situation-dependent sensor-process parameters by sketching a profile over a graphical display of the shared sensor data. This requires only a simple pattern-recognition ability. Experiments showed that novice operators with no special task knowledge can set appropriate parameters for the given task conditions.

A robot task design system for robot tool manipulation tasks is proposed and implemented. The system consists of an on-site object modeling system and a task attribute design system. The on-site object modeling system is an online measurement system that obtains the local object geometry. The task attribute design system is an off-line system that describes the tool operation along the task path on the object. It provides a high-level task description suitable for human understanding of the task via a graphical user interface. This system has been successfully applied to a deburring robot system equipped with a laser range sensor.

The proposed bin-picking method combines object recognition with path planning. To avoid conflicts between the assumptions of the elemental techniques needed for bin-picking, object recognition is combined with path planning by using environmental information. To achieve this combination, a Hough transform, which records the model-to-image matches in a Hough space, is used to estimate the pose. The matches represent the arrangement of the objects, so they can be regarded as environmental information for path planning. To reduce the number of recognition errors and the object-detection time, a pair of object features that reduces the number of invalid votes in the Hough space is used for the Hough transform. Simulated path planning showed that using a Hough space to represent the environmental information improves the ability to plan a safe path for the manipulator. Simulated object recognition showed that using a pair of features makes the process faster and reduces the number of invalid votes. The pose estimation and safe path planning ability were confirmed by an experiment on casting objects using a range finder and a robot.

A new framework is proposed for generating trajectories for robots. This planning by analogy approach uses problems and solutions acquired from previous operator teaching or automatic path planning. Unlike traditional path-planning methods, users need not specify goals or prepare search heuristics. Instead, users specify the correspondence of objects in the task environment to those in a reference environment. Path planning by analogy reduces the amount of operator instruction and the computational cost of making a path, and can generate a trajectory close to the desired trajectory.

We describe a new robot teaching interface, the multimedia communication pendant (MC Pendant) to make robots more intelligent through human support. Wide, nonverbal and bi-directional communication channels and multimedia technology allow information to be shared between operators and robots. That is information to be reflected human knowledge or perception and robot information to be perceived by humans. Experimental results show that the MC pendant improves operational accuracy and greatly reduces the time needed for teaching, compared with a conventional pendant.

Introduces the concept of a tool manipulation strategy (TMS) for a robot controller to guarantee both easy task description and reliable task execution. The authors believe that a method for tool manipulation is essential for manufacturing tasks. TMS provides easy implementation and description of a skilful worker's knowledge about tool manipulation. It is a two-level concept: the first level is the fundamental motion strategy for executing a task generated offline and the second level is the strategy for modifying the first-level TMS according to the task conditions in real time. The authors implemented a tool manipulation module for robotic deburring based on the TMS concept into an experimental task execution system (called NOAC) and performed a deburring experiment to determine the effectiveness of TMS.

In this paper, we propose the concept of robotic task design for task directed robotics in order to develop a framework for achieving versatile robotic task execution system. This system consists of the following subsystems: 1) a robotic task design system; 2) a teaching (programming) system; and 3) a task execution system. These have equal importance in accomplishing the task intended by the user with the robot system instead of over emphasizing the task execution system which has been the main research area of robotics in terms of motion control. Based on this proposed concept, a robotic task execution controller called NOAC is designed. The main concept in the structure of NOAC is to separate function (1) which is commonly needed by every task in the task class (task class function) and function (2) which is a task-oriented function. They are to be parallel processed on NOAC system. This separation simplifies software development. A deburring task is designed based on the nature of the burr and implemented onto the NOAC system with the above concept. This system is shown to be simple and expandable.>