In this paper, a new design method of adaptive PID controller is proposed. The method utilizes the plant characteristics called almost strict positive realness (ASPR) so that the stability of the adaptive PID control system is always guaranteed. The design scheme is derived for the design of adaptive tracking PID control system. Here it is also proposed a new design procedure of the parallel feedforward compensator (PFC) which actually guarantees the ASPRness of the controlled plant. The result is examined by applying it to the design of the first order with time delay process system. The effectiveness of the method is examined through simulations and experiments using thermal pilot plant

In adaptive output feedback control based on almost strictly positive real (ASPR) conditions, a technical difficulty arises when the controlled multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system is non-square. To overcome this, the idea of multirate sampled-data control has been proposed. That is, through careful choice of faster input sampling rates create a lifted discrete-time system which has the same number of inputs and outputs and does not give rise to the causality constraint. The output feedback based adaptive control strategy can then be applied to this lifted system under certain conditions. In this report, we propose a robust adaptive controller design scheme for non-square MIMO systems using the multirate sampling strategy without the causality problem

An important ability in auditory robots is the localization of sound source. In this paper, a robust method to localize the vertical direction of the sound source with two microphones and pinnae is proposed. In order to achieve vertical sound source localization, the method of detecting spectral cues, the relationship between spectral cues and source direction are studied. In addition, this paper considers sound source separation in order to recognize and isolate spectral cues only from the sound source in order to make the method robust to extraneous noise. Furthermore the authors designed an audio servo with the proposed spectral cues and implemented the method in an actual robot. The experimental results confirmed the effectiveness of the method

In this paper, an algorithm to estimate wind direction by using a small and light Unmanned Air Vehicle(UAV) called KITEPLANE was proposed. KITEPLANE had a big main wing which is a kite-like delta shape and, therefore, it was easy to be disturbed by wind. However, this disadvantage implies that the KITEPLANE has an ability to sense wind and that it is expected to use the KITEPLANE as a sensor for wind estimation. In order to achieve this feature, dynamics of the KITEPLANE under wind disturbance were derived and a numerical estimation method was proposed. Devices equipped on board were also developed and the proposed method was implemented. Results of an experiment showed the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Sound localization is one of important abilities for robots which utilize auditory information. Binaural information such as interaural time difference (ITD) or interaural intensity difference(IID) is effective for horizontal sound localization. In order to extend this ability to vertical sound localization, spectral cues were utilized in this paper instead of increasing number of microphones. Spectral cues were the information about the vertical position of the sound source on frequency domain. Since spectral cues strongly depended on the shape of pinnae, artificial pinnae for auditory robots were designed based on diffraction-reflection model. A method to detect spectral cues was also developed. By utilizing them, a controller which made the robot orient to the sound source was proposed. Results of an experiment showed the validity of the proposed method.

In this paper, audio servo robot system which was a servo system using audio information as feedback signal was considered. Since the sampling rate of audio signal and that of robot controller are usually different, the system is able to be treated as a multi-rate system. Since it is general that the sampling rate of the output is faster than that of the input, the controller obtains more information than a single-rate servo system. By using this property, an adaptive audio servo system was proposed. Results of a computer simulation and an experiment showed effectiveness of the method.