Cleaning of glass windows for buildings is a dangerous work for human. Automatic cleaning for glass windows has been, thus, expected. Authors have developed an autonomous small-sized robot which can be used for glass window's cleaning even on not fully-flat walls. There are two major ways for the motion control of the autonomous cleaning mobile robot, which are reaction-based control method and model-based control method. Efficiency of the cleaning using the reaction-based method is lower than one using the model-based method. This study aims to develop a high efficiency and high reliable glass cleaning robot. Thus, we adopt the model-based method for the control of the cleaning robot. For the efficient and reliable cleaning, the robot should follow a desired path accurately. However, the trajectory tracking on a window is not so easy because of gravity and other dynamical effects. Moreover, even if the robot follows the desired path exactly, the robot can not assure a complete cleaning of the glass window. Therefore, the paper discusses a trajectory tracking control problem on the glass window, and also proposes a novel dirt detect sensor and a motion control method to guarantee the completeness of glass window cleaning. The validity of those proposed methods is confirmed by experiments using a window cleaning robot which attracts a window by magnetic force.

Highly-functional mobile devices, such a smart phone, have appeared. Location based services of the mobile devices are assimilated in a variety of ways. Then, Indoor localization sensor is necessary to access the location based services seamlessly. This paper researched the performance of indoor localization with ZigBee based particle filter. This paper showed this method can localize a resting target within 2.0 meter accuracy and can localize a moving target with an area levels localization. ZigBee based particle filter can be one of some options for location based services in indoor spaces.

The severely handicapped often uses breath pressure for an input method to control various instruments such as TV, motorized bed, curtain, air conditioner in everyday life. Most of the input devices are ON/OFF (digital) type for the control of equipments. Considering the application of electrically powered wheelchair, the ON/OFF type interface is not desirable. Because the control of powered wheelchair needs preciseness and quickness for safe operation. A new input device using breath pressure is proposed for such purposes. The paper examines basic performances of human breath pressure control as an analog input device. Then possibility of two-dimensional input device by the breath pressure is discussed for the control of powered wheelchair. Basic experiments to study performance of the two-dimensional analog input device by breath pressure for an operation of the powered wheelchair are shown.

Force and torque induced by traveling motion of a mobile robot effect dynamically to the objects being carried on it. If the induced force and torque should be bigger than the static friction force and torque exerting between the carrying objects and the mobile robot, the carrying objects start to slip on it. Since this slipping motion causes increasing the acceleration of the mobile robot, then the slipping of one object leads to a dangerous collapse of all carrying objects. Furthermore it interferes with accurate traveling motions. Then we propose a fastest guidance control method with acceleration restriction of power wheeled steering (PWS) mobile robot to prevent slipping of carrying objects. The performances have been examined by simulations and experiments

On the basis of an analysis of the interaction between a manipulator for grinding process and a working object in the task space, motions of the constrained dynamics of the robot is modeled first in this paper. In the model, the constrained forces are expressed as an algebraic function of the state and input generalized forces by using the equation of constraints. Using this result, a new sensorless force control law is proposed by taking the advantage of the redundancy of input generalized forces to the constrained forces. A controller for a grinding robot is then constructed according to this control law and without involving any force sensors. Grinding experiments have been done for evaluating the feasibility of the controller by taking an articulated planar two-link manipulator as an example. Results show that the constrained force is explicitly controlled by proposed control law. The effectiveness of the controller for real grinding task has been verified.

The research concerning mobile manipulator being composed of a mobile robot and a mounted manipulator has been growing a topic. Further, traveling operation that means the mounted manipulator operates during traveling can improve the efficiency, since it can prepare some tasks during traveling for desired tasks required to do at the destination place. The traveling operation is also important for active sensing by hand-eye camera equipped at the top link of the mounted manipulator, because the camera have to be directed temporally to the moving object in the camera image to obtain information for navigation. However, the traveling operation of the mobile manipulator involves some difficulties to control, such as dynamical interference and non-holonomic character. Therefore the trajectory-tracking errors of the mobile robot that means the base link of the mobile manipulator are integrated on the floor. This integration is caused by the non-holonomic constraint expressed by a differential equation of first order. As the result of it, the integrated error never converges to zero by a controller being used usually for fixed manipulator, since the controller is based on the holonomic character. Constructing a controller including a consideration of the non-holonomic constraint can solve this problem. In this paper, we propose a control method that guarantees zero convergence of guidance errors and the trajectory tracking errors of mounted manipulator, and the proof is given by Liapunov method. Simulations confirm the performances of the proposed controller, and the results show that the guidance errors and trajectory-tracking errors converge to zero. Furthermore the dynamical influences that slipping carrying objects give to the tracking controller are evaluated by the resulted trajectories on the floor.

Force and torque induced by the traveling motion of a mobile robot effect dynamically to the objects being carried on it. If the induced inertia force and torque should be bigger than the static friction force and torque, the carrying objects begin to slip on the mobile robot. A final purpose of this research is to construct a guidance controller that can travel as fast as possible, on a condition of preventing the slipping of the carrying objects. For this purpose, we modeled a mobile robot carrying plural objects to analyze the influences of the slipping to the traveling motion and to discuss a constraint conditions for the controller of guidance not to make the carrying objects slip.

Force and torque induced by motions of a mobile manipulator affect dynamically the objects being carried. If the induced inertia force and torque are bigger than the static friction force and torque, the carrying objects start slipping on the mobile manipulator. As the result, the movement of one carrying object may cause the collapse of all carrying objects, since the start of slipping makes the acceleration of the mobile robot increase, interferes with accurate traveling operations and is dangerous. The final purpose of this research is to propose a navigation controller for the mobile manipulator that prevents the carrying objects from slipping. As a first step, we propose a model of an n-link Power Wheeled Steering (PWS) mobile manipulator including the slipping motion of many carrying objects. Using the proposed model, the dynamical influences of slipping are analyzed and the model is justified through several simulations.