Avoiding obstacles is one of the essential functions of outdoor mobile robots. Detection of three-dimensional obstacles and avoidance methods have been studied actively. However, planar obstacles, such as puddles, have been ignored generally. Avoiding puddles is important to prevent electrical problems, odometry error, and feeling displeasure. This paper proposes a method to detect puddles by using laser reflection intensity obtained from 2D LRF and a method for path planning to avoid the puddles. Laser reflection intensities of several road surfaces are investigated, and the effectiveness of the proposed methods are confirmed through experiments with a real-robot.

The legged mechanism has flexibility to change its movement for ground conditions such as flat, slope, step or any other rough terrain. If mobile robots have such mobility and stability, they were able to work more wider fields and situations This paper proposes a method to acquire the gait pattern by using a genetic algorithm. A robot model which is based on real robot specifications is created to obtain the gait pattern through simulations. The objective of this proposed method is to achieve walking by applying the gait pattern to the real robot. The proposed method were evaluated by real robot experiments for loading the obtained gait pattern through simulations. There were difference between the real robot and the simulation models in the time. However, the robot was able to obtain the faster gait pattern and walking rear pattern by GA through simulations.

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.