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Introduction

  • Cellular Robotic System (CEBOT)

    CEBOT is an abbreviation of Cellular Robotic System that is a self-organizing robotic system proposed by myself. The CEBOT consists of many robotic units with a simple function, named cell, The CEBOT can reconfigure the whole system depending on given tasks and environments and organize collective or swarm intelligence. The concept of the CEBOT is based on biological organization constructed by enormous natural cells. Several prototypes of the CEBOT has been developed and demonstrated under this project. This research project includes the development of a new CEBOT system and several issues related to mutual communication between cells, the optimum dynamic knowledge allocation among cells, the reconfiguration strategy of the system and the artificial-life such as the cooperative behavior modeling of ants. This invokes many interesting research problems, such as dynamic decentralized planning, dynamic distribution and coordinated control system as well as hard ware systems. Many applications are under considerations: space, agricultural, medical, and construction applications, including the distributed inspection, monitoring, and surveillance system.

  • Microrobotic System and Micromechatronics

    This topic includes the analysis, the development and the control of microactuators, micro mobile robotic system and micromanipulators. Micro mobile robotics systems in a small pipe and micromanipulators with multi-degrees of freedom have been developed in this laboratory. We have joined the member of the advanced research center, which is one of the facilities of Nagoya University and has three clean rooms and microfabrication facilities of silicon, such as a Chemical Vapor Deposition Machine and Reactive Ion Etching Machine. They are now available for the development of micromachine and microrobotic systems. Our laboratory organizes the International Symposium on Micromechatronics and Human Science regularly every year with the support by the bity of Nagoya and other organizations. Micro Line Trace Robot and programmable Micro Autonomous robotic System (MARS) is also produced based on the support by them.

  • Nanotechnology

    The scope of this project is following. The theory and application based on analysis and synthesis from the micro level to the nano level engineering problems, including the material fabrication, device, machining, micro/nano manipulation, micro/nano measurement, micro/nano actuation, simulation, micro/nano robotics bio-medical science and industrial applications.

  • Bio-Micro Manipulation System

    This project aims at developing the manipulation system of micro objects such as the biological cell, microbe and DNA molecule with directly contact manipulation and non-contact manipulation. The biological cell is so small and flexible that it is difficult to handle by the manipulator with fingers directly. Therefore, non-contact manipulation with optical power and field power such as electrostatic field is considered to be effective to handle it. This project approaches to achieve the manipulation system by the constructing the micromanipulator using optical and electric field power and operating system using virtual reality technology.

  • Telesurgery System for Intravascular Neurosurgery

    Goal of this project is to develop a medical assistance system which supports doctor's operation and decision making while a medical treatment. Our target field is the intravascular neurosurgery using a catheter that is a thin tube made of soft plastic. This softness of the catheter disturbs operator's appropriate maneuvering and this causes fatigue of patients and doctors and elongating of the operation time. Therefore, a novel medical assistance system is needed. Our approach is; first: developing new surgical devices using micro technologies and installing these devices in the intravascular surgical tools. We have developed a small force sensor that is installed in the tip of catheter. The diameter is 1.2 mm and the length is 5 mm. This small force sensor measures the contact force between the catheter and blood vessels. This information is an alternative tactile sensation that doctors had never felt. Second: integrating these micro devices into teleoperation system appropriately. Third: developing new control strategies that enable doctors to operate intravascular surgical tools easily. The new sensation is useful when the teleoperation system displays that information appropriately to the operator. So a new control strategy is needed.

  • Machine Learning of Intelligent Robotic System

    The adaptability to various environments of humans and animals by themselves is far more superior to robots developed up to now. In order for the future robots to play an active part in our life space like living creatures, it is desirable that they could realize better performance than preprogrammed movements and work in more various environments than in preprogrammed ones. In this research, control architecture for robot motion learning is studied and applied to a brachiation robot, which moves like a gibbon from branch to branch by its arms, both in simulations and experiments.

  • Intelligent Human Machine Interface Considering InteractiveAdaptation

    This project proposes Interactive Adaptation Interface applied to an operation system of rough terrain crane. The system assists human operation with various types of operational assistance information based on sensor's output and an automatic control theory. The VR technology enables the system to express more effective and easier to understand with visual display, tactile display, auditory display, etc. The system has a function that infers human's states (e.g. operational skill level) with Recursive Fuzzy Inference. To apply this function, we focus on tactile display because the system can change the strength of operational assistance. We made a VR crane simulator, which includes the proposed operational assistance system. Operational experiments were performed to confirm the effect of the proposed system. The aim of the experiments is to suppress payload's swing with 2 DOF joystick. The joystick has tactile display devices in its grip. Subjects control the joystick to suppress payload's swing with referring tactile display which shows proper control method. The results clearly show the effect of the proposed operational assistance system.

  • Intelligent Control by Soft Computing: A baby learns various basic behavior

    walk, catch, and throw, by his own evaluation and some visual information after many trials. After that, a child learn more complex behaviors in less iterations by connecting objective behavior with some fundamental behavior learned in past experiences. After much experience, human can learn more complicate behaviors based on them. Using this procedure, a robot can gradually get more complicate behaviors after some steps, unless designer needs making huge programs and adjusting its parameters. In this research, behavior acquisition and behavior coordination algorithm is studied. About behavior acquisition, we use genetic algorithm, evolutionary programming, reinforcement learning. About behavior coordination, we proposed hierarchical behavior-based architecture, which enable for a robot to perform some complex behavior coordinating the obtained fundamental behaviors.

  • 6-leg Omnidirectional Walking Robot with Manipulator

    This walking robot consists of 6 legs and it can walk rough terrain. There are great demands for omnidirectional walking robot, which can be applied into the any environments. This system will be used in many fields such as construction sites, civil engineering sites and for planet exploring. The present project is a scheduling of the task by the Hierarchically Structural Robotic System with walking robot and manipulator.

  • Image Processing Using KANSEI Engineering

    Human being often judges based on KANSEI of himself. This research aim at analysis of mechanism of decision making based on KANSEI and realization of KANSEI model using self-tuning fuzzy inference.

  • Emotional Robotic System

    Human being changes his motion and performance according to his decision making and emotion. Robotic System changes its strategy based on the algorithms programmed by operator. Besides, the robotic system has to adapt itself into the variable environments since the robots are applied into the various applications by its higher quality. The emotion is considered to be one of the parameters to adjust the condition and performance of robot. This project is the approach to the design the group robotic system to improve its performance based on the emotion-like parameters.

  • Study on dynamically dexterous robots from a nonlinear control point of view

    A growing number of robotics researchers have taken an interest in building in dynamically dexterous robots---machines that are required to interact dynamically with an unactuated environment in order to achieve a designated task. We wish to understand how such dynamically dexterous tasks can be achieved using physical insight into the task and intrinsic dynamics of the system. Brachiating robots take an interesting place within this larger category of machines that juggle, bat, catch, hop and walk in effort to achieve dynamically dexterous behavior analogous to that of humans and animals. We confine our attention to the control of a simplified two-link brachiating robot from a nonlinear control point of view. In the longer run, we are hopeful that the brachiation task may lend significant insight into general locomotion systems as well as wider problems requiring dynamical dexterity. In addition to the current projects listed above, we had the following past work. A part of them is now still studied in other universities or institutes by the former students or other researchers. As a result of these projects, this laboratory produced over 41 Ph.D. students and published about 900 transaction, journal and international conference papers from 1989 to 2000.

  • Optimization of Intelligent System by Genetic Algorithm

    Genetic Algorithm is an optimization algorithm based on a model of evolution in life. This project applies the GA for optimization of structure of intelligent system. The intelligent system includes recognition system and intelligent control system by fuzzy logic and neural networks. Moreover, the GA is applied to motion planning of single robot and multiple robots. Coordinative behavior is seen as a result of optimization in the multi-agent-robot system.

  • Robot applied under hazardous environment

    The main purpose of this project is to develop a robotic system for maintenance applications under unstructured environments. The wall-climbing robot, the flying manipulator, the brachiation type of mobile robot, the pipe inspection robot etc. have been proposed.

  • Hierarchical Intelligent Control by Artificial Intelligence

    ATDNN (Active Time Delay Neural Network) has been proposed by our laboratory as a new N.N. structure with the combination of the fuzzy logic used for improvement of the convergence. Under successful research works, IJCNN'93 (International Joint Conference on Neural Networks) was held in Nagoya in October 1993, chaired by Prof. Toshio Fukuda. The development of the intelligent control system using FAN technologies is a goal of this project.

  • Sensor Integration System

    A new sensor integration technique using neural network and fuzzy inference has been developed so far. The goal of this project is to develop a sensor integration system for robotic applications in the aerospace industry.

  • Parallel Link Manipulator

    Parallel link manipulator has high rigidity and positioning accuracy, compared with conventional serial link manipulators and attracting great attention. We have proposed calculation algorithm of forward kinematics and inverse dynamics of parallel link manipulator, which is necessary for practical use of parallel link manipulators.

  • Man-Robot Cooperation Type of Manipulator System

    The system is maneuvered directly by an operator. The cooperation control of the manipulator and the operator with interaction under its working environment has been proposed and applied to an experimental system. This system is to be applied for the robot in construction.

  • Skill-Based Control of Manipulator

    The goal of this program is to transfer human skills to robot controller. How to model a task, extract human skills from the operator's motion and apply it to robot control is the main issue of this research. A method for an assembling task of two parts has been proposed.

  • Single-Master Multi-Slave Manipulator System

    The goal of this project is to develop a semi-autonomous telerobotic system based on the concept of task-oriented control. How to control slave arms in cooperation using a master arm is the problem of this research. A task-oriented control of a single-master dual-slave manipulator system has been proposed.

  • Coordinated Motion Control of Dual Manipulators

    The target of this project is to develop a coordinated motion control algorithm of manipulators based on the impedance model of each arm. The algorithm is applicable to both manipulation of an object and relative dynamic motion of RCC between two parts. It specifies the load, external force distribution, the internal force applied to the object and apparent impedance of the manipulated object.

  • Teleoperation

    In this project, alternative control algorithms for a tele-manipulator system are developed. The aim of this project is assisting a human operator by using a intelligent master slave manipulator system. We also handle the problem of the time delay that exists in the transmission line of a tele-manipulator system.

  • Optical Servo System

    We have studied on optical servo system using optical actuator. As an example, optical piezoelectric actuator driven by optical power supply is studied for the optical actuator in the optical servo system. This actuator has possibility to be used as a communication device. Integrating these abilities, we can make the opt-electromechanical system. We developed the prototype of the optical micro gripper and the optical mobile robot.

  • Neural Network Using Incremental Learning

    Architecture of neural network for incremental learning is proposed. This neural network has the input layer and the output layer of neurons based on radial basis function. This neural network learns patterns by incremental learning that is based on increasement of neurons in the output layer. It can memorize new patterns without forgetting old patterns by learning only new patterns.

  • Force / Impact Control of Robotic Manipulator

    We have studied on the force control, which is a necessary technique when a manipulator is applied to the tasks having mechanical interactions with its environment, and the control considering collision between the robotic end-effector and its environment .

  • Image Processing for Bio-Engineering Technology

    The development of the image processing system for microrobots is the goal of this project. AI, fuzzy and neural network technologies are applied to this project. The recognition of animal cells on a micro carrier and the recognition of protoplasts for bio-engineering applications are the current research topics.

  • Self-Organizing Manipulator System

    The goal of this project is to develop a multi-purpose end-effector system based on the concept of CEBOT. The end-effector can be built by the manipulators, after planning the configuration and the function of the system. The major issues of this project are how to design and control the end-effector cells and how to reconfigure them for a task. The experimental system has been developed for the versions 1.0 and 1.5.